Desert, Wilderness, Wasteland, and Word features an English translation of a recently discovered and until-now unpublished essay of Jacques Ellul's that examines the significance of the desert from biblical, theological, and ethical perspectives. It also provides an introduction that contextualizes Ellul's piece, and five incendiary essays that critically reflect on Ellul's work. Altogether, this volume offers fresh and provocative insight into the writings of Jacques Ellul during a historical moment that appears to be on its way to, or already in, a desert, wilderness, and wasteland, with many people in it who are desperate for encounters with a new, revitalizing Word.

Desert, Wilderness, Wasteland, and Word features an English translation of a recently discovered and until-now unpublished essay of Jacques Ellul’s that examines the significance of the desert from biblical, theological, and ethical perspectives. It also provides an introduction that contextualizes Ellul’s piece, and five incendiary essays that critically reflect on Ellul’s work. Altogether, this volume offers fresh and provocative insight into the writings of Jacques Ellul during a historical moment that appears to be on its way to, or already in, a desert, wilderness, and wasteland, with many people in it who are desperate for encounters with a new, revitalizing Word.

This multivolume work is still proving to be as fundamental to Old Testament studies as its companion set, the Kittel-Friedrich Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, has been to New Testament studies. Beginning with father, and continuing through the alphabet, the TDOT volumes present in-depth discussions of the key Hebrew and Aramaic words in the Old Testament. Leading scholars of various religious traditions (including Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Greek Orthodox, and Jewish) and from many parts of the world (Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States) have been carefully selected for each article by editors Botterweck, Ringgren, and Fabry and their consultants, George W. Anderson, Henri Cazelles, David Noel Freedman, Shemaryahu Talmon, and Gerhard Wallis. The intention of the writers is to concentrate on meaning, starting from the more general, everyday senses and building to an understanding of theologically significant concepts. To avoid artificially restricting the focus of the articles, TDOT considers under each keyword the larger groups of words that are related linguistically or semantically. The lexical work includes detailed surveys of a word s occurrences, not only in biblical material but also in other ancient Near Eastern writings. Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Ethiopic, Ugaritic, and Northwest Semitic sources are surveyed, among others, as well as the Qumran texts and the Septuagint; and in cultures where no cognate word exists, the authors often consider cognate ideas. TDOT s emphasis, though, is on Hebrew terminology and on biblical usage. The contributors employ philology as well as form-critical and traditio-historical methods, with the aim of understanding the religious statements in the Old Testament. Extensive bibliographical information adds to the value of this reference work. This English edition attempts to serve the needs of Old Testament students without the linguistic background of more advanced scholars; it does so, however, without sacrificing the needs of the latter. Ancient scripts (Hebrew, Greek, etc.) are regularly transliterated in a readable way, and meanings of foreign words are given in many cases where the meanings might be obvious to advanced scholars. Where the Hebrew text versification differs from that of English Bibles, the English verse appears in parentheses. Such features will help all earnest students of the Bible to avail themselves of the manifold theological insights contained in this monumental work.

Socio-Anthropological Approaches to Religion: Environmental Hope interprets the fundamental functions of spirituality through the theories and practices of hope and understanding the futuristic aspiration of new religious movements. The book portrays a neutral notion of hope that can be either religious or humanistic in the face of the suffering or despair of present reality. The concept of hope (or hopelessness) is demonstrated in each chapter under the global circumstance of health risk. Part One represents the various theories of hope in Christian history, ecology and climate, the Sabbath and surveillance, and the triune God. The insecure situation that creates the expectation of hope is demonstrated in Part Two, where the case studies of terrorist attacks, immigration, volunteering behavior, religious education, and medieval Islamic tradition indicate social unbalance. The last section illustrates the cultural anthropology of hope through the activities of different native new religious movements including the Moonies’ Unification movement, Yoruba Nigerian indigenous spirituality, and Cosmovisions of Sepik New Guinea. This book examines hope as a crucial element of human’s internal healing beyond medical technology.

Millennials and Gen Zers have been characterized as individualistic capitalist consumers, as politically unengaged and spiritually selfish, or only interested in identity politics. This edited collection, by bringing together younger generations of theologians, activists, campaigners, artists, and those working in politics, academia, the church, economics, or community work, offers a new narrative of justice- one that is globally aware and actively intersectional. Bringing together powerful young voices with a wealth of contextually grounded experiences of faith and justice, spreading over Mexico, India, Nagaland, Germany, Wales, Ecuador, South Africa, Palestine, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Scotland, England and the Pacific, the chapters in this book imagine daring new possibilities. Together the chapters reveal a generation who face a burning, politically and religiously right-leaning, egotistical world, and who know clearly that the legacies of Empire, which continue white hegemony, patriarchy, heterosexuality, normalized cisgender identities, the class war, colonial debts, Western epistemology, and ecological extraction, must be overcome and replaced by a transnational solidarity of resistance and reimagination.

The Beast and Babylon answers some age-old questions about the two symbolic entities featured in the book of Revelation. These symbols have historically been typified as a revived Roman Empire, and its God-opposing religious counterparts that rise up (in Europe), prior to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. In contrast, this informative and timely study reveals that the latter-day beast power rises out of not one, but out of three defunct previous empires in the Middle East; knownvia Daniels metaphorsas the lion, bear, and leopard kingdoms. It appears from Daniel 7:1112, that long after the last manifestation of the Roman Empire is destroyed, these three dormant empires are revived for a season and a time. During their rejuvenation, they reappear in Revelation 13 and 17 in the form of a tripartite, seven-headed, political/religious beast power that emerges from the topographies of the ancient Grecian (leopard), Persian (bear), and Babylonian (lion) kingdoms. Furthermore, these combined territories encompass ten sovereign Islamic horn nations that were revealed after the Ottoman Empire was abolished ninety-five years ago. Today, many of these Islamic nations contain embedded terrorist groups whose fanatical Jihadist leaders are determined to resurrect a radical pan-Islamic Caliphate, by which to establish Sharia law throughout the World. To achieve these objectives, the latter-day nascent imperial beast powerin conjunction with ten like-minded insurgent leadersmust initiate a global Jihad to incite war on the people of God, and conspire to destroy a religious city called Mystery, Babylon the Great.