Chosen? by Walter Brueggemann
Are the people of 21st-century Israel the chosen ones of Genesis to whom Yahweh promised the land in eternal covenant? Walter Brueggemann gives a nuanced answer.
hebrew bible
The Love of God, by Jon D. Levenson
Jon Levenson's new book reflects on the theme of the love of God in the Hebrew Bible. The three components of his subtitle suggest the range and depth of his exposition.
Found in translation
George Steiner said that "the translator invades, extracts, and brings home." In this remarkable volume, Everett Fox does all of this.
The Prodigal Son is often read to mean that God loves sinners, whereas the Jews thought God only loved the righteous. This makes no sense.
The Nonviolent God, by J. Denny Weaver
J. Denny Weaver is steadfast in his conviction that any conception of God found in the Bible must first be compared to the person of Christ himself.
The Torah, the Gospel, and the Qur’an, by Anton Wessels
Anton Wessels emphasizes points of convergence among the Abrahamic religions, even assimilating their scriptural perspectives into a single story. It's an audacious wager, and not without dangers.
Subversion and hope
In two pages, you go from a simple devotional habit to being sucked into the vortex of global power plays. You must be reading Brueggemann.
President Obama’s speech in Newtown on December 17 included this pivotal question: “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” The president is bristling here at the way our political discourse reflexively leaps to claims about individual rights and freedoms.
Notice the size of this psalm: it moves from the revelation of God in the heavens to the revelation of God in scripture to the mysterious working of God’s word in the believer.