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Exploration of how medieval people categorized the world, concentrating on the division between the natural and the supernatural.

Did Moses turn rods into serpents? Does Uri Geller bend spoons? Did Socrates and Joan of Arc have spirit guides? Did Daniel Home levitate? Natural and Supernatural is the first full survey of the subject for over a century.

In A Remembrance of His Wonders, David I. Shyovitz uncovers the sophisticated ways in which medieval Ashkenazic Jews engaged with the workings and meaning of the natural world, and traces the porous boundaries between medieval science and mysticism, nature and the supernatural, and ultimately, Christians and Jews.

Dr. Michael S. Heiser presents fifteen years of research on what the Bible really says about the unseen world of the supernatural, unfiltered by tradition or by theological presuppositions. Who were the sons of God? Who were the Nephilim? Where do angels fit into the supernatural hierarchy? What relation does Jesus bear to the rest of the supernatural world? Heiser tackles these questions and many more as he shines a light on the ancient context of Scripture. After reading this book, you may never read your Bible the same way again. In Supernatural, Heiser takes the core message from his recent best-seller, The Unseen Realm, and presents it for the person in the pew. He offers the same approach to reading and understanding Scripture, but without all the extra footnotes and supporting information needed for the scholarly treatment. “We can’t believe what we don’t understand. In Supernatural, Michael Heiser helps us to do both. It may open your eyes to the scripture in a new way.” —John Ortberg, author of If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat

Humans--even those who consider themselves secular or atheists--are utterly seduced by supernatural beliefs. Clay Routledge, an experimental social psychologist who grew up in a deeply religious environment, argues that belief or trust in forces beyond our understanding is natural and rooted in our fears of death. In Supernatural: Death, Meaning, and the Power of the Invisible World, Routledge argues that supernatural thinking is adaptive, even healthy, and that it should unite and not divide us.

In June 1981, six young Croatians in the village of Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia, reported that the Virgin Mary had appeared to them. The Medjugorje visionaries say that Mary has returned every day since then, bringing them important messages from heaven to convey to the world. Throughout history, people have reported encountering extraordinary religious experiences-apparitions of the Virgin Mary, visions of Jesus Christ, weeping statues and icons, the stigmata, physical healings and miracles, and experiences of the afterlife-and interpreted them as supernatural in origin. Scholars have often tried to reinterpret such experiences, including those described by the great mystics like Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and Teresa of Avila, into natural or psychopathological categories, such as hysteria, hallucination, delusion, epileptic seizures, psychosis, the workings of the unconscious mind, or fraud. Are such reductionist explanations valid? Over the past three decades the Medjugorje visionaries have been subjected to extensive medical, psychological, and scientific examination, even while undergoing their visionary experiences. Daniel Klimek argues that the case of Medjugorje affords a rare opportunity to understand a deeper dimension of extraordinary religious phenomena. Presenting and analyzing the scientific studies on the visionaries in juxtaposition with the major scholars and debates surrounding religious experience, Klimek concludes that a multidisciplinary approach grants a more holistic and deeper understanding of such extraordinary religious experiences.