Interest in the historical Jesus continues to occupy much of today's discussion of the Bible. The vexing question is how the Jesus presented in the Gospels relates to the Jesus that actually walked this earth. Studying the Historical Jesus is an introductory guide to how one might go about answering that question by doing historical inquiry into the material found in the Gospels. Darrell Boc…
One of the most important theologians of the twentieth century illuminates the relationship between ourselves and the teachings of Jesus. What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bo…
This title of this book was inspired by the happy resolution of a problem of translation. A number of the Latin legal, ecclesiastical, and literary texts discussed below use the expression 'aliena misericordia' to describe the motivation of the person who rescued abandoned children.
Historians have credited—or blamed—Calvinism for many developments in the modern world, including capitalism, modern science, secularization, democracy, individualism, and unitarianism. These same historians, however, have largely ignored John Calvin the man. When people consider him at all, they tend to view him as little more than the joyless tyrant of Geneva who created an abstract theol…
This book recounts the Roman and Jewish context of New Testament times...the lives of John and Jesus, and the history of the first two generations of the Church.
World-renowned biblical interpreter Walter Brueggemann invites readers to take a closer look at the subversive messages found within the Old Testament. Brueggemann asserts that the Bible presents a "sustained contestation" over truth, in which established institutions of power do not always prevail. But this is not always obvious at first glance. A closer look reveals that the text actually con…
Renowned for his Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy and Reflections on History, Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897) has well been described as “the most civilized historian of the nineteenth century.” Judgments on History and Historians consists of records collected by Emil Dürr from Burckhardt’s lecture notes for history courses at the University of Basel from 1865 to 1885. The 149 bri…
This is a biography of a member of the prominent Drexel family of Philadelphia who devoted her immense fortune and her life to the services of others, and in the black habit of a nun was content to walk “simple, silent and unknown.” Granddaughter of the first Francis Drexel, who built up one of the large financial empires of our country, Katharine Drexel grew up in ease, even in luxury.…
For centuries, revivals?and the conversions they inspire?have played a significant role in American evangelicalism. Often unnoticed or unconsidered, however, are the particular theologies underlying these revivals and conversions to faith. With that in mind, church historian Robert Caldwell traces the fascinating story of American revival theologies from the First Great Awakening through the Se…