Advocating a pluralistic reading that acknowledges the many voices speaking in the Bible, Susan Gillingham offers theological, historical, and literary insights into the compilation of Scripture and the development of biblical studies. Providing one of the most accessible and helpful introductions to the Bible available, this volume clearly outlines the main issues in understanding Scripture and demonstrates, using Psalm 8 as an example, the best method for reading the Bible today.

Ground-breaking scholarship about how the Torah became the Jewish canon.

The most common English translations of the Bible often sound like a single, somewhat archaic voice. In fact, the Bible is made up of many separate books composed by multiple writers in a wide range of styles and perspectives. It is, as Michael Carasik demonstrates, not a remote text reserved for churches and synagogues but rather a human document full of history, poetry, politics, theology, and spirituality. Using historic, linguistic, anthropological, and theological sources, Carasik helps us distinguish between the Jewish Bible’s voices—the mythic, the historical, the prophetic, the theological, and the legal. By articulating the differences among these voices, he shows us not just their messages and meanings but also what mattered to the authors. In these contrasts we encounter the Bible anew as a living work whose many voices tell us about the world out of which the Bible grew—and the world that it created. Listen to the author's podcast.

This is the fully revised and expanded second edition of English - One Tongue, Many Voices, a book by three internationally distinguished English language scholars who tell the fascinating, improbable saga of English in time and space. Chapters trace the history of the language from its obscure beginnings over 1500 years ago as a collection of dialects spoken by marauding, illiterate tribes. They show how the geographical spread of the language in its increasing diversity has made English into an international language of unprecedented range and variety. The authors examine the present state of English as a global language and the problems, pressures and uncertainties of its future, online and offline. They argue that, in spite of the amazing variety and plurality of English, it remains a single language.

Pluralism presents both promises and challenges for Christian theology in the next millennium. Here biblical scholars, religious ethicists, and theologians reflect on the meaning and abiding relevance of the Christian revelation for communities of faith and the life of the church.

List of members in each volume.

Vol. 1-36 (1879-1914) give statistics for 1878-1913.

Perception and cognition – seeing, hearing and understanding – are main themes in the Biblical Hebrew text of Jeremiah 1:1-6:30. This volume examines the text using a cognitive linguistics approach. This recently developed approach allows the modern reader to more fully understand the ancient text by observing aspects of embodied experience that are shared across time, space and culture, such as image schemas, conceptual metaphor and more elaborate conceptual blends. In addition to offering insights into some key textual disjunctions, these findings contribute towards reading and understanding the final form of the text.

Lamentations is a book that has never had a place of honor at the table of Christian spirituality. This is an unfortunate state of affairs because its challenging poetry has much to offer. This volume explores the how the biblical book of Lamentations may be engaged afresh so that it can function as Holy Scripture for the ekklesia. Four main chapters consider issues in hermeneutics, exegesis, the use of Lamentations in worship, and pastoral reflections. These chapters have been supplemented by seventeen reception history studies written by an international team of Jewish and Christian scholars. These studies introduce a wide range of interpretations and uses of the book of Lamentations from throughout the history of Judaism and Christianity. They include examinations of the use of Lamentations in Isaiah 40-55, the Targum, Rashi, and contemporary Jewish thought, the Patristic period, Calvin, Jewish and Christian worship, music, Rembrandt, and psychological and feminist interpretation. Appendices include new English translations of LXX Lamentations and Targum Lamentations.