Balaam's Prophecy


Book Description

Balaam's Prophecy is a personal account of Jewish history in the years 1939-89. Written by Ambassador Naphtali Lau-Lavie, journalist and diplomat, who survived the horrors of Nazi concentration camps and later became a leading personality in the government of Israel, this book reflects upon major historic events during the second half of this century as experienced by the author.




Balaam's God


Book Description

A renowned diviner. An approaching and victorious army. A divine encounter. A talking donkey. And the message of Yahweh reigning as King. Balaam is well known as the primary example of a false prophet in the New Testament. But he wasn't a false prophet in the way that many of us would define them today. His story remains shocking and often misunderstood. While many remember the story of the talking donkey from the book of Numbers, few remember Balaam's incredible insights and battle of wills with Yahweh the Creator of the Universe. Balaam's God reveals the depths of Balaam's powers, the source of his accurate insight, and the weaknesses that led him astray. Balaam's reputation within the New Testament is as one of the worst false prophets in all of history. Yet his history outside of the New Testament is as one of the greatest diviners in all of antiquity. Balaam is a mysterious figure, yet the biblical text and context reveal the nature of his gifts and powers as well as the nature of his character. And there are important connections between Balaam and both the true and false prophets of today. Balaam's story doesn't end after his last oracle in the book of Numbers. It continues into the book of Revelation and even into our current day. In these pages you will discover the secrets to Balaam's communication with God, how God turned wrong divination into pure prophecy, and how to turn from Balaam's ways to a true mouthpiece of Yahweh.







The prophecies of Ballaam


Book Description







Prophecy


Book Description

More than any other topic, prophecy represents the point at which the Divine meets the human, the Absolute meets the relative. How can a human being attain the Word of God? In what manner does God, when conceived as eternal and transcendent, address corporeal, transitory creatures? What happens to God's divine Truth when it is beheld by minds limited in their power to apprehend, and influenced by the intellectual currents of their time and place? How were these issues viewed by the great Jewish philosophers of the past, who took the divine communication and all it entails seriously, while at the same time desired to understand it as much as humanly possible in the course of dealing with a myriad of other issues that occupied their attention? This book offers an in-depth study of prophecy in the thought of seven of the leading medieval Jewish philosophers: R. Saadiah Gaon, R. Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Gersonides, R. Hasdai Crescas, R. Joseph Albo and Baruch Spinoza. It attempts to capture the `original voice' of these thinkers by looking at the intellectual milieus in which they developed their philosophies, and by carefully analyzing their views in their textual contexts. It also deals with the relation between the earlier approaches and the later ones. Overall, this book presents a significant model for narrating the history of an idea.




Prophecy


Book Description

William Edwy Vine, author of the celebrated Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, was one of the great evangelical Bible scholars of the twentieth century. He brought to all his writings a level of exegetical care and precision that is rare in any age, ensuring his writings still speak to this generation and future ones. This volume of Vine’s Topical Commentaries presents Vine’s writings on biblical prophecy, the Second Coming, and last days. The general introduction to the book and specific instructions before each article explain the original context of the writings while demonstrating their significance for today.




The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi


Book Description

This book is the fruit of the first ever interdisciplinary international scientific conference on Matthew's story of the Star of Bethlehem and the Magi, held in 2014 at the University of Groningen, and attended by world-leading specialists in all relevant fields: modern astronomy, the ancient near-eastern and Greco-Roman worlds, the history of science, and religion. The scholarly discussions and the exchange of the interdisciplinary views proved to be immensely fruitful and resulted in the present book. Its twenty chapters describe the various aspects of The Star: the history of its interpretation, ancient near-eastern astronomy and astrology and the Magi, astrology in the Greco-Roman and the Jewish worlds, and the early Christian world – at a generally accessible level. An epilogue summarizes the fact-fiction balance of the most famous star which has ever shone.




Homilies on Genesis


Book Description

V. 1. Homilies 1-17.- v. 2. Homilies 18-45.




The Prestige of the Pagan Prophet Balaam in Judaism, Early Christianity and Islam


Book Description

This volume deals with the pagan prophet Balaam who figures in the book of Numbers. By the very nature of his stature as a non-Israelite, pagan prophet, the figure of Balaam raises important questions with regard to the nature of prophecy and the relation between the Israelite God and the pagan nations. The conflicting stories and potent oracles of Balaam in Numbers 22-24 and other parts of the Jewish Scriptures prompted extensive reflection on this ambiguous figure. Thus the leading perspective developed in this volume is the often simultaneous praise and criticism of Balaam as a prestigious pagan prophet throughout ancient Judaism, early Christianity and the early Koranic commentaries. The papers are clustered in four sections which deal with (1) Balaam in the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East, and comparable figures in Ancient Greece; (2) Balaam in Ancient Judaism; (3) Balaam in the New Testament & Early Christianity; and (4) Balaam in the Koran and early Koranic commentaries. The reception of this enigmatic figure can be characterized as the simultaneous praise and criticism of a pagan prophet. The book is particularly useful as it also contains Émile Puech’s newly reconstructed text, translation and commentary of the first combination of the Deir ‘Alla inscriptions which contain an excerpt of the book of the historical Balaam. Combined with the other papers, the volume pictures a fascinating continuum between paganism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.