Sarah’s Laughter


Book Description

Sarah’s Laughter provides a reflection on suffering that is deeply personal and both theologically and philosophically astute. Vinoth Ramachandra draws on his distinctive positioning as a Sri Lankan Christian theologian – one who has lived and ministered in contexts shaped by the destruction of natural disasters and the violence of human evil – to confront the intellectual, moral, and political challenges posed to faith in the increasingly broken world of the twenty-first century. Yet far from being an abstract discussion of theodicy, this book is intimate and vulnerable, embracing the biblical practice of lament and inviting an authentic response to grief – one that makes space for serious doubt and profound questioning. Sharing his own ongoing journey with suffering and a questing faith, Ramachandra reminds us that lament and joy, faith and protest, clarity and ambiguity, belong together in faithful Christian discipleship. It is not in bypassing the darkness of the world, but in embracing it – in imitation of the incarnate God – that we may glimpse the new creation.




The Laughter of Sarah


Book Description

The laughter of delight has gone unheard in the Western tradition. This work brings new light to the notion, and has a consistent leitmotif: the delighted laughter of the matriarch Sarah in the book of Genesis, when she gives birth to her son Isaac. This laughter is "heard" through biblical commentaries and twentieth-century theorists of laughter.




The Author of Love


Book Description

Throughout history, God has been depicted variously as a judgmental tyrant, a grand conciliator, and even as a rather low-key comic, portrayed by the cigar-smoking George Burns in the movie Oh God! The question thats begging to be answered is: Who is God? This devotional evolved out of one persons desire to portray God in a truer light. In the Book of Job, God reprimanded Jobs friends for failing to speak truthfully about Him. They misrepresented His character. Job, on the other hand, understood His Maker and was, therefore, the single voice of truth in an otherwise corrupt world. Can you honestly say that you know your Creator? Can you speak truthfully about Him? This devotional will help you get to know the real God, who is neither the judgmental tyrant nor the light-weight movie character. He is, if nothing else, a God of love and compassion. At the conclusion of your devotionals, I have formulated a Love Quotient (L.Q.) test to measure the depth of your love. The questions are designed to be thought-provoking and insightful. You may also find them a bit daunting and uncomfortable. Answer each question according to your beliefs. There are no wrong or right answers. It is my hope youll find this little exercise revealing and instructive of how you love. The answers and Key is also included. Your heart is what youre all about. May you understand Gods love for you.




Daring, Disreputable and Devout


Book Description

Stories of women in the Bible have been interpreted by artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and biblical commentators for centuries. However, in many cases, these later interpreters have often adapted and altered the Bible to fit their own view(s) of the stories. Ironically, these later renderings usually serve as the basis for the generally accepted view(s) of biblical women. For example, many readers of the Bible assume that Eve is to blame for the disobedient act in the Garden of Eden, or that Delilah seduced Samson and then cut his hair. A closer look at these assumptions, though, reveals that they are not based on the Bible, but are mediated through the creations of later interpreters. In this book, the author examines eight such women's stories, and shows how later readers interact with the biblical stories to construct sometimes fanciful, sometimes faulty views of these women. Dan Clanton, Jr. broadens our awareness of the influence of these later readings on how we understand biblical women so that we can be more critical in our engagement with them, and become more familiar with what the Bible actually says about the women whose stories it contains.




Constructing Virtue and Vice


Book Description

The study examines textual representations of women's laughter and smiling and their imagined connection to female virtue in a wide variety of discourses and contexts of the German Middle Ages, including medieval epic, ecclesiastical texts, conduct literature, lyric, and sculpture. By engaging with the competing, and at times contradictory, views of female laughter, it reaffirms a disputatious nature of medieval culture, in which multiple views of femininity, sexuality, and virtue stood in a conflicting, yet productive, dialogue with one another. The society that emerges when one looks at medieval German texts is always ambivalent: it thrives on and enjoys talking about sensuality and eroticism, while being constrained by the conventions of polite behavior and the fear of sin; it relies on the ritual use of laughter, while marking it as a sign of lust and perdition. Women's laughter thus offers an important way into understanding medieval views of gender because it combines physicality with shifting and conflicting cultural norms.




American Biography


Book Description




Finding Hagar


Book Description

Finding Hagar probes the relentless pursuit by the living God of a fugitive woman who falls outside the line of his chosen people. This pursuit ensures Hagar’s destiny by giving her an identity as one who is seen and known by God himself. Hagar’s story centers around a deeply personal dialogue with God concerning her past and her future, her story and her dreams; and while his promises are rooted in her reality, they also carry her forward to a new horizon of hope. Often recognized as one of the Bible’s most powerful stories of God’s love, which is always undeserved and unmerited, this book is a reminder of God’s abundant grace towards all people at a time when there is much division and animosity towards the descendants of Hagar. As we witness major displacement of peoples around the world, the story of Hagar – of God’s encounter with a displaced and oppressed woman – inspires hope and purpose for today’s fractured global community.




In Scripture


Book Description

Applying psychoanalytic and gender theory to selected Biblical narratives from Genesis to the Book of Ruth, Lefkovitz interprets the Bible’s stories as foundation texts in the development of sexual identities. In Scripture is an exploration of the Biblical origins of a series of unstable ideas about the sexes, human sexuality, family roles, and Jewish sexual identities, in particular, and by extension, changing attitudes towards Jewish men and women.




The Genesis of Fiction


Book Description

This book considers a range of twentieth-century novelists who practise a creative mode of reading the Bible, exploring aspects of the Book of Genesis which more conventional biblical criticism sometimes ignores. Each chapter considers some of the interpretive challenges of the relevant story in Genesis, especially those noted by rabbinic midrash, which serves as a model for such creative rewriting of the biblical text. All the novelists considered, from Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and Thomas Mann to Jeanette Winterson, Anita Diamant and Jenny Diski, are shown to have been aware of the midrashic tradition and in some cases to have incorporated significant elements from it into their own writing. The questions these modern and postmodern writers ask of the Bible, however, go beyond those permitted by the rabbis and by other believing interpretive communities. Each chapter therefore attempts to chart intertextually where the writers are coming from, what principles govern their mode of reading and rewriting Genesis, and what conclusions can be drawn about the ways in which it remains possible to relate to the Bible.




Distant Voices Drawing Near


Book Description

"Distant voices drawing near is a tribute to the scholarly career of Antoinette Clark Wire, the Robert S. Dollar Professor of New Testament at the San Francisco Theological Seminary. In recognition of her work, the contributors to the volume have critically engaged the areas of Christian origins and the role of women in the biblical world, hermeneutics and feminist perspectives in biblical interpretation, and cross-cultural study of the Bible."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved