Heaven's Interpreters


Book Description

In Heaven's Interpreters, Ashley Reed reveals how nineteenth-century American women writers transformed the public sphere by using the imaginative power of fiction to craft new models of religious identity and agency. Women writers of the antebellum period, Reed contends, embraced theological concepts to gain access to the literary sphere, challenging the notion that theological discourse was exclusively oppressive and served to deny women their own voice. Attending to modes of being and believing in works by Augusta Jane Evans, Harriet Jacobs, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Elizabeth Stoddard, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Susan Warner, Reed illuminates how these writers infused the secular space of fiction with religious ideas and debates, imagining new possibilities for women's individual agency and collective action. Thanks to generous funding from Virginia Tech and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.




God’s Court and Courtiers in the Book of the Watchers


Book Description

First Enoch is an ancient Judean work that inaugurated the genre of apocalypse. Chapters 1-36 tell the story of the descent of angels called "Watchers" from heaven to earth to marry human women before the time of the flood, the chaos that ensued, and God's response. They also relate the journeying of the righteous scribe Enoch through the cosmos, guided by angels. Heaven, including the place and those who dwell there (God, the angels, and Enoch), plays a central role in the narrative. But how should heaven be understood? Existing scholarship, which presupposes "Judaism" as the appropriate framework, views the Enochic heaven as reflecting the temple in Jerusalem, with God's house replicating its architecture and the angels and Enoch functioning like priests. Yet recent research shows the Judeans constituted an ethnic group, and this view encourages a fresh examination of 1 Enoch 1-36. The actual model for heaven proves to be a king in his court surrounded by his courtiers. The major textual features are explicable in this perspective, whereas the temple-and-priests model is unconvincing. The author was a member of a nontemple, scribal group in Judea that possessed distinctive astronomical knowledge, promoted Enoch as its exemplar, and was involved in the wider sociopolitical world of their time.







Interpreting Matthew


Book Description

This volume contains Watchman Nee's last study on the Gospel of Matthew (1950-52) as well as his earlier notes from 1924-26, displaying the growth he achieved in his understanding during the course of his illustrious ministry.




Interpreting Eden


Book Description

"No interpreter of the creation narratives can avoid interacting with this book." —Derek W. H. Thomas Christians have long discussed and debated the first three chapters of the Bible. How we interpret this crucial section of Scripture has massive implications for how we understand the rest of God's Word and even history itself. In this important volume, biblical scholar Vern Poythress combines careful exegesis with theological acumen to illuminate the significance of Genesis 1–3. In doing so, he demonstrates the sound interpretive principles that lead to true understanding of the biblical text, while also exploring complex topics such as the nature of time, the proper role of science, interpretive literalism, and more.




The Heavens Are Telling the Glory of God


Book Description

Building on the work of Teilhard de Chardin, the New Cosmology integrates scientific facts and theories, including discoveries about the expanding universe and evolution, and proposes that creation is developing into greater complexity. But how are we to understand concepts like “original sin” and “redemption” if creation isn’t complete and humanity is still in process? How does one “retrofit” religious tradition and Scripture into this scenario? Is there room for the historical Jesus in the New Cosmology? While a ready concern for all Christians, this question has unique implications for women religious whose lives are centered on the person and mission of Jesus Christ. How is a Catholic sister to understand her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in light of a cosmology in which the need for redemption and the role of Jesus are significantly redefined? The Heavens Are Telling the Glory of God probes these questions and offers possible answers. Beginning with the experiences of women religious and their encounter with the New Cosmology or Universe Story, this book seeks to mediate among the various perspectives and proposes how informed and reflective engagement with science, tradition, and theology can bridge the generational divides and foster a spirituality that is both emergent and incarnational. Access to online discussion and reflection questions is included.




Heavens Are Changing


Book Description

A study of Protestant missionization among the Tsimshianic-speaking peoples of the North Pacific Coast of British Columbia during the latter half of the nineteenth century




A Guide to Interpreting the Bible Correctly 2


Book Description

We, as a civilization, were not the first to invent and detonate a nuclear weapon. You would not know that weapons of mass destruction—WMD—information is contained in the Old Testament texts because the evidence is not clear-cut and, therefore, not in-your-face type. The Bible interpreters usually employ unnecessary religious iconography to describe events that are simply irreligious. We fail to interpret the Bible according to the authors’ intended meaning. Today, it has become the fad to dismiss the well documented events in the Bible as mythological fairy tales. They do this to show that they are “woke.” However, they lack understanding of plain sight knowledge. We fail to see all the technologies in the Bible, so much so, many people believe the stories are make-believe, and, on the other hand, at best, people claim to believe by faith. Facts are facts and will remain factual at all times when we start interpreting based on the authors’ intended meaning. Faith is unnecessary once you get it. The question we should be asking is: Who or what was using those advanced weapons, and why? Today, we can’t even figure out how the pyramids were built and the purpose of why they were built, so how much more figuring out the stories of the Bible? Here is a work leading to the road of no more worries. Don’t let a strategy so simple as distract, deceive and yell continue to wear you down in the various places you listen to the Bible get interpreted.This work: A Guide to Interpreting the Bible Correctly, will explain all the keys you will need for interpreting the Bible easily and correctly. The scales will fall off your eyes, and the Old Testament will come alive. However, for you to understand the events in the Old Testament, you have to push the boundaries harder than what you are used to hearing and learning. You have to unlearn and relearn a lot of misunderstood information. I have also pushed the boundaries harder than I am used to, to bring you part one of this work.




The Monthly Interpreter


Book Description




The Qur'an and Its Interpreters


Book Description

For almost fourteen centuries the Qur’an has been a source of inspiration and solace and, above all, a guide along the way of life toward eternity. Using commentaries from the classical period through the medieval and modern periods to the present, this series presents the Qur’anic explanation as Muslims have understood it and interiorized it throughout its rich exegetical history. This series has been written not primarily for scholars, but for interested readers and non-Arabic speaking students of Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim. This volume contains the first and second surahs of the Qur’an, al-Fatihah and al-Baqarah, and is the first of several volumes yet to be published. The second volume containing the third surah, Al Imran, has been published simultaneously. The entire collection will comprise an encyclopedia of the Qur’an commentary.