Biblical Events Research Articles

Collective trauma and post-traumatic symptoms in the biblical narrative of ancient Israel

According to the biblical books of Exodus and Numbers, the early Israelites suffered recurrent plagues and other events which comprise significant collective trauma coinciding with their physical and spiritual birth as a people. These ancient narratives reflect a fledgling people's coping with high levels of transitional stress, multiple crises, and significant losses attendant upon slavery and genocide. Inspection of the text also reveals signs of collective post-traumatic reactions among the Israelites. Relevant psychological perspectives on stress, loss, and trauma can therefore usefully illuminate specific biblical events. Trauma may well be implicated in the etiology of certain stringent biblical commandments, including “the ban” and related severe restrictions against Israelite intermarriage. The Bible may also contain insights bearing upon social action aimed at preventing or coping with epidemics and for overcoming psychological trauma, of relevance to a modern positive community psychology.

Divine Silence in Stefan Heym’s The King David Report

This essay deals with Stefan Heym’s King David Report as a work of artistically-based biblical scholarship rather than a work of political allegory related to the writer’s experience in the East Block during the Cold War. I consider Baruch Halpern’s notion of complementary causation (the attribution of causes behind given biblical events to divine and human agency at the same time) in connection to King David’s seduction of Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of Bathsheba’s husband in 2 Samuel. I try to demonstrate Heym’s refusal to attribute complementary causation to the biblical events in order to expose David and Solomon as Machiavellian autocrats rather than instruments of God. Given that (according to Baruch Halpern) the biblical story of David is an apologia of Solomon’s illegitimate rule, Stefan Heym’s novel undermines the traditional view of Solomon as a Christ type and a great Israelite monarch. Heym’s position is contrasted with the deeply ingrained tradition in Judeo-Christian culture of seeing David’s life in terms of complementary causation. The conclusion seeks to illustrate Heym’s general philosophic stance that makes spirituality and power incompatible.

The Way of Biblical Education for Holiness in the Perspective of Interfaith

Holiness is essentially the notion that wholes, or at least some wholes, are more than merely the sum of their parts. It is a historical and communal. Holiness demands congruence between one’s conviction and action. It means liberation from ignorance and for full consciousness, joy, integration, transformation.Biblical education for holiness accentuates solidarity, sharing life, with those who suffer poverty,rejection, and injustice. The goal of educating in holiness is to help people experience the unity of the Biblical event and of humankind and to participate in the service of God’s people through prayer, worship, celebration, and learning experiences of suffering love.The methods for education for holiness are varied: Bible study of the hermeneutics, whole-braincentered brain Bible study, theological Bible study, Bible study of critical reflections and dialogue, and spectrum Bible study. Its goal is to free every Christian, congregation from isolation or the narrow confines of one group, nation, or tribe, and so free them to live the universal faith in company with all God’s people.

American Artists, Jewish Images (review)

Reviewed by: American Artists, Jewish Images Susan Chevlowe American Artists, Jewish Images, by Matthew Baigell. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2006. 272 pages. 77 black-and-white illustrations. $45.00. Matthew Baigell's American Artists, Jewish Images is an illuminating study of the work of Helène Aylon, Ben-Zion, Leonard Baskin, Wallace Berman, Hyman Bloom, Tobi Kahn, R. B. Kitaj, Jack Levine, Barnett Newman, Archie Rand, Abraham Rattner, Ben Shahn, Max Weber, and Ruth Weisberg. Each of these artists has created paintings, sculpture, performance and installation art on an array of themes. However, Baigell made this selection because these modern artists also "have created major bodies of work with Jewish subject matter." This book, avoiding the question of "Jewish art," focuses on identifying and interpreting iconography—images based on Jewish religion and culture—and conveying a sense of their change and evolution over the last century. "[A]s a by-product of the great wave of immigration from eastern Europe between 1880 and 1920," according to Baigell, Jewish artists began to explore and record "Jewish experiences, religious practices and cultural habits" (p. 2). Initially and until about 1940, genre scenes of Old World memories and immigrant life were most popular. In time, imagery related to the Holocaust, the Bible, the Talmud, the Kabbalah, and liturgical texts began to appear. In the 1970s Jewish women artists began to employ feminist subject matter. Baigell's examination of both works with Jewish subject matter and subjects that, for lack of a better descriptor, are "not Jewish," varies by artist. For example, Baigell does not explore the possible convergence of Weber's modernist tendencies (in particular, his cubist style and urban subject matter) with his Jewish immigrant identity in paintings prior to 1918. His focus is on Weber's turn to Jewish subject matter around that date, which he situates within then ongoing cultural debates around ethnic pluralism, a concept that would "permit individuals to maintain their Jewish heritage and at the same time [allow them] to adapt to American life" (p. 12). For Baigell, Weber's many images of Orthodox rabbis "symbolically bridged the distance between the modern American world of change and innovation and the mythically unchanging world of the shtetl. . ." (p. 14). [End Page 210] While specifically religious practices or customs appear in the work of the older generation of artists who were exposed to them as children yet became adults who were for the most part secular, the process of identifying them or fully analyzing their meanings sometimes calls for speculation on the part of the author. Nonetheless, Baigell's interpretations are exceedingly rich and based on a deep understanding of Jewish texts and practices. His attention also makes visible the kinds of images that have been marginalized by the vicissitudes of taste and the art market. Baigell reads closely such paintings as Weber's Adoration of the Moon (1944), whose subject is the observance of the new moon (Rosh Hodesh); he infers Rothko's knowledge of Jewish burial practices in his analysis of a series of burial scenes from the early 1940s. In readings of two of Bloom's paintings, Baigell surmises that The Synagogue (ca. 1940) represents the start of the evening service of Yom Kippur and argues that The Bride (1941) was intended "to commemorate the beginning of [the Friday evening] . . . Sabbath service" (p. 37). Baigell adds a specifically Jewish gloss to the famous statement by Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb: "We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject is valid which is tragic and timeless." In his mythical paintings in which he "correlated archaic with contemporary art," Rothko "was giving voice to an old Jewish habit of conflating present with past tragedies . . ." (p. 66) whether these were medieval or modern pogroms, the Holocaust, biblical events, or, especially, the destruction of the First Temple—an idea explored variously by Yosef Hayem Yerushalmi, David Roskies, Amos Funkenstein, and Arthur Herzberg and Aron Hirt-Manheimer, whose writings fill in the cultural, literary, religious, and historical context of Baigell's interpretation. Elsewhere Gershom Scholem's understanding of the mysticism of Rabbi Luria informs Baigell's consideration of Newman's Onement I; Similarly, Sander Gilman's thoughts...

A History of Obesity, or How What Was Good Became Ugly and Then Bad

Chronic food shortage and malnutrition have been the scourge of humankind from the dawn of history. The current worldwide epidemic of obesity, now recognized as a public health crisis, is barely a few decades old. Only after the technological advances of the eighteenth century did a gradual increase in food supply became available. The initial effect of these advances in improved public health and amount, quality, and variety of food was increased longevity and body size. These early favorable outcomes of technological advances notwithstanding, their incremental effect since the Second World War has been an overabundance of easily accessible food, coupled with reduced physical activity, that accounts for the recent increased prevalence of obesity. Obesity as a chronic disease with well-defined pathologic consequences is less than a century old. The scarcity of food throughout most of history had led to connotations that being fat was good, and that corpulence and increased "flesh" were desirable as reflected in the arts, literature, and medical opinion of the times. Only in the latter half of the nineteenth century did being fat begin to be stigmatized for aesthetic reasons, and in the twentieth century, its association with increased mortality was recognized. Whereas early reports listed obesity as a risk factor for mortality from "chronic nephritis," the subsequent recognition of the more common association of obesity with diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease altered the listings and questioned its being a risk factor for kidney disease. An enlarging body of evidence, accrued over the past decade, now indicates a direct association of obesity with chronic kidney disease and its outcomes.

Israelis' Attitudes toward the Disengagement Plan, Perceived Risk, and Knowledge of Biblical Events

A sample of 73 Israeli students perceived current risks related to the disengagement plan but showed low awareness of Biblical civil wars and political assassinations. Attitude toward disengagement did not correlate with current perceived risks or awareness of Biblical violence. Left-leaning subjects were more supportive of disengagement and perceived greater risk of political assassination in its wake.

Romanos Melodos: Kontakion 8 ‘on the Three Children’

In this article I have taken a closer look at the way Romanos has developed the theme of the Three Children or Three Young Men as part of a series of articles on this subject published in this issue. The analysis is divided into three parts : 1. An introduction dealing in short with the nature of the kontakion in general, the liturgical setting of kontakion 8 in particular, and its possible sources. 2. A detailed analysis of the plot/structure of the kontakion, i.e. the way Romanos has developed his theme. Both contents and major stylistic features are discussed. 3. Finally, an interpretation of the way Romanos has 'read' (=interpreted) this biblical event. Two aspects regarding his reading of the biblical text are analysed : a. The delineation of the biblical personalities; b. Christological typology as method of exegesis.

Passover in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis: The Connection of Early Biblical Events with Passover in Targum PseudoJonathan in a Synagogue Setting

Passover in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis: The Connection of Early Biblical Events with Passover in Targum PseudoJonathan in a Synagogue Setting

Familiennamen der Białystoker Juden von scheltendem Charakter

Examination of anthroponymic material of Jews from Bialystok shows that surnames of typically nickname charakter include surnames describing man's behaviour, his character, faults and virtues as well as surnames alluding to his physical appearance or physical infirmity. They also include insulting surnames devised by clerks to humiliate. Other surnames made on the basis of an appellative lexis usually relate to biblical events, animal, plant and material symbols and metaphors or serve to hide identity. To establish their nickname nature, unequivocal information about motivation, choice and conferment of such names is necessary.

The potential of potential fields for detecting buried impact structures: Earth and Mars

Since the 1795 publication of James Hutton's Theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustrations , uniformitarianism, sometimes simply stated as “the present is the key to the past” has been a fundamental tenet of geology. Uniformitarianism's slow geologic processes, combined with the enormous age of the Earth, have been a cornerstone of geologic thinking for the past 200 years. On the other hand, catastrophists, such as the influential French naturalist Georges Cuvier (1769–1832), sought to explain all geologic features in a few thousand years, based partly on a literal interpretation of certain Biblical events. For example, catastrophists claimed that the enormously thick layers of sediments which Hutton said required millions of years to accumulate were laid down in the great Noachian deluge—i.e., Noah's flood. Since then, geologists have modified the original concept of uniformitarianism by recognizing that geologic processes take place at different rates and, generally, the greater the rate, the rarer the event—for example, the concept of the “hundred-year flood” or the Gutenberg-Richter relationship (the log of the number of earthquakes greater than a certain magnitude decreases linearly with magnitude). However, geologists have long been reluctant to call on extraterrestrial processes to explain terrestrial features; it smacked of the much-maligned deus ex machina. The pioneering work of Eugene Shoemaker (1928-1997), more than any other single person, changed this thinking. Shoemaker studied Arizona's Meteor (or Barringer) Crater, and proved that it was an impact crater, not a volcanic caldera as previously assumed (Figure 1). Until the 1960s, even the craters on the Moon were thought to be due to volcanism and not impact! Figure 1. Meteor, or Barringer, Crater is about 1.2 km in diameter and estimated to be about 50 000 years old. (Photo courtesy of Alan Herring.) Since then, geoscientists have been looking for, and have found, other terrestrial …

In the Beginning was the Word . . . `Das Prager Abendmahlspiel': the words rendered into action and images

First there were the words and the written biblical, liturgical and apocryphal texts were made verbal by reading, preaching and singing in churches. Already at a very early stage the biblical events were made visual. The performances of medieval religious plays rendered the words into action and into images. They were written as part of a theological message and were intended to be an act of teaching and worship combined. Consequently their contents were common knowledge. The Prague Last Supper has only come down to us in a single 15th century manuscript that is in the Narodni Knihovna in Prague. The play has the following scenes: the meal at the house of Simon the Leper, preparations for the Last Supper, the Last Supper, the washing of the feet and the appeal to go into the garden. The author is unknown, but he had knowledge of the Bible and he had a feeling for dramatic effects, even though the surviving text does not give us a complete picture of what was actually performed. He used the possibility of narrating events that seem difficult to perform and he shows originality in the selection, the sequence and the development of the scenes.

Passover in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis: The Connection of Early Biblical Events with Passover in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan in a Synagogue Setting

Passover in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis: The Connection of Early Biblical Events with Passover in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan in a Synagogue Setting

Passover in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis: The Connection of Early Biblical Events with Passover in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan in a Synagogue Setting (review)

Passover in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis: The Connection of Early Biblical Events with Passover in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan in a Synagogue Setting (review)

Anna Seghers: The Mythic Dimension

Fehervary Helen. Anna Seghers: The Dimension. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2001. 275 pp. $52.50 hardcover. Helen Fehervary's monograph substantially complicates future readings and interpretations of writings of Anna Seghers. That is not least of its merits. For while Seghers's work continues to be explored in lively Argonautenschiff (The Anna Seghers Yearbook) and elsewhere, a number of simplistic assumptions about her survive. Foremost among these is notion of Seghers's faith, both political and religious. Seghers's adherence to communism, according to decades' old cliches, is supposed to have been an act of (rather than reason). Seghers's attitude toward her Judaism, according to more recent debates, was one of rejection and denial. Rather than arguing for one side or other of these polarizing assumptions, Fehervary chooses to investigate. Her investigation reveals Seghers's faith as constituted by complex notions of messianism, chiliasm, and mysticism dating back to first century Jewish-Christian community in Palestine and language of its chronicles. These concepts often form well disguised subtext in genres of fable, legend, folk and fairy tales favored by Seghers. All of which marks Mythic Dimension in Seghers's work that is subject of Fehervary's monograph. Fehervary's investigation starts in Heidelberg where Seghers studied art history, spending much time on old Dutch masters and receiving a doctorate for her thesis on Jews and Judaism in works of Rembrandt. Fehervary's detailed analysis, in first three chapters of her book, reveals extent to which Seghers was influenced by the iconography and scenic composition characteristic of landscapes (42) in these paintings. Fehervary's main point here is that these were paintings of crucifixion landscapes and other biblical scenes. Her close reading of a scene from Grubetsch, for example, shows that it reenacts Christ's Dinner at Emmaus not as rendered in Bible, but rather in paintings and etchings by Rembrandt. The messianic aspects of figures such as Grubetsch (or Hull, in The Revolt of Fishermen) are shown to be constructed from visual codes created long after biblical events to which they refer. Seghers's messianism is mediated through Rembrandt's (a devout Christian's) vision of early first-century Christian communities (formed by Jews). Fehervary's layered deciphering of Rembrandt's influence reveals central role Jews play in Seghers's mythical thinking, though, in complex world of Anna Seghers these are Christianized Jews. While this will not end debate over Seghers's attitude toward (her) Judaism, it will add to its complexity. The other main influence on young Seghers in Heidelberg came from her fellow student and future husband Laszlo Radvanyi who at time was writing his dissertation on Understanding of Chiliastic Idea and Chiliastic Action (73). Fehervary's exploration of Radvanyi's background-about which little was known until now-leads her to focus, in chapters 4 through 6, on Hungarian connection in Seghers's life and work. …

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem: archaeology, religious commemoration and nationalism in a disputed city, 1801–2001

The pace and agenda of archaeology in Jerusalem has always been influenced by unspoken ideological and political factors. This article attempts to trace the ideological and political contexts in which archaeological exploration and interpretation has been carried out during the last 200 years. Beginning with a brief description of the Solomonic obsessions of the late antique and medieval rulers of Jerusalem, the article describes how, over the centuries, the identification of certain monuments with the biblical events and personalities had far‐reaching effects on the character of subsequent archaeological work. The article then traces the course of modern archaeological exploration in the city from the Late Ottoman Period through the end of the twentieth century. The article concludes with an examination and analysis of the politics of archaeology in Jerusalem in the current Israeli–Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem's presumed final status in a peace settlement.

Spanish, Portuguese, and Neo-Latin Poetry Written and/or Published by Seventeenth-, Eighteenth-, and Nineteenth-Century Sephardim from Hamburg and Frankfurt (2)

The present study is the second in a three-part series (the first appearing in Sefarad 59 [1999] pp. 3-42; the third being in press) on the phenomenon of Neo- Latin and Romance-Language —Spanish and Portuguese— poetry of the Sephardim in Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main from the early seventeenth to the midnineteenth centuries. Our collection expands the original poetic corpus from twenty-eight to forty-five works. In an historical and critical Introduction to the poems, the authors distinguish the creative genius of a new type of literary discourse, one which meshes neo-classical strophic forms with inspiration from Sephardic orthodox Judaism as it was practiced in the Dutch Netherlands, biblical events and Jewish philosophical constructs. In addition to the evaluation and edition of the poems and, in the cases of Neo-Latin works, their translation to English, the Introduction includes an argument for substantiating book printing of Sephardic-authored books in Frankfurt am Main during the period 1614-1634 as well as sporadically throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century.

Encountering Difference: Rembrandt’s Presentation in the Dark Manner

Rembrandt’s etching of The Presentation of Christ in the Temple of c. 1654 has long been understood to represent a radical break from the protocols of pictorial and scriptural tradition. The significance of this theological inflection, however, has yet to be investigated. This study locates Rembrandt’s dramatic reformulation of the biblical event within a distinctive historical and religious context by considering the artist’s involvement with Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, the foremost Jewish apologist of the seventeenth century. In 1655 Rembrandt illustrated the rabbi’s messianic treatise, Piedra Gloriosa, a book which emerged from and was fashioned to appeal directly to a movement within Dutch Protestantism known as ‘philosemitism’. Philosemitic texts are shown to correspond theologically with Rembrandt’s transformation of the scene into a confrontation between the universalist message of the Christian Gospel and the authority and ceremonial of Jewish law.

Osanna! New light on the Palm Sunday processional antiphon series

A model for the Roman liturgical order for processions on Sundays was Easter, the festal day described in Ordo Romanus I, rather than the preceding Sunday, perhaps a more obvious pattern for a procession within the Proprium de tempore.Michel Andrieu, ed., Les Ordines Romani du haut Moyen Age, 5 vols. (Louvain, 1931, 1948–61) II, 68–9, Ordo I, 5: ‘nam prima feria regio tertia, id est paschae, secunda feria’, etc. ; I, 7: ‘Diebus itaque sollemnibus, id est Pascha’. ‘Id est’ might be interpreted ‘for example’. Note that Easter is only one example of the papal processional procedures found only in this ordo. See John F. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228 (Rome, 1987), 131–2. The present study originated as a paper for the session ‘Music for Festal Days’ at the 34th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May, 1999. The singing by the Hebrew people of Hosanna and Benedictus qui venit to acclaim the one progressing into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday would seem to be the ideal archetype for a procession with song to replicate a biblical event, reported uniformly in all four Gospels.Matt. 21:8–9; Mark 11:8–10, Luke 19:36–8 (with different wording); John 12:12–13. The Old Testament presaging of Benedictus is Psalm 117:26. The visual replay with the symbols of olive branches and palm fronds and the commemorative Palmesel, integral to the procession, have been studied in critical detail by Karl Young and many who have followed in the wake of his pathbreaking The Drama of the Medieval Church. Much of the music has been expertly studied by Terence Bailey. On musical and prayer formularies from the typikon and early Western patristic citations (i.e. Bede, Aldhelm, Amalarius and Drogo of Metz), see Hermann J. Gräf, Palmenweihe und Palmprozession in der lateinischen Liturgie (Kaldenkirchen, 1950), 10–15, 30–2. See also Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1962), I: 90–8, 519, 527, 533, 549; Terence Bailey, The Processions of Sarum and the Western Church (Toronto, 1971), 33–40 (Examples 6–14); 166–7 (Table 2). (The acclamation Benedictus qui venit–Hosanna in excelsis that follows the Sanctus of the Mass precluded movement by its position within the liturgy.) By the time of the pilgrim Egeria, who visited Jerusalem in the early 380s, the commemoration of the Evangelists' historiae had engendered a meeting at the very spot where in biblical times infants, strewing palms sang the celebrated Benedictus verse, now converted into a refrain.‘Et jam cum coeperit esse hora undecima [die dominica] legitur ille locus de evangelio, ubi infantes cum ramis vel palmis occurrerunt Domino, dicentes: Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Et statim levat se episcopus et omnis populus; porro inde de summo monte Oliveti totum pedibus itur. Nam totus populus ante ipsum cum hymnis vel antiphonis, respondentes semper; Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini’. [Peregrinatio ad loca sancta] Itinerarium 31, 1, ed. Pierre Maraval, Egérie: Journal de Voyage, Sources Chrétiennes 296 (Paris, 1982), 274; trans. John Wilkinson, Egeria's Travels to the Holy Land (Jerusalem, 1981), 133. Other translations and descriptive material are found in Cyrille Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, rev. and trans. William G. Storey and Niels Krogh Rasmussen (Washington, DC, 1986), 11. On the date of Egeria's report, see Peter Jeffery, ‘The Earliest Christian Chant Repertory Recovered: The Georgian Witnesses to Jerusalem Chant’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 47/1 (1994), 2–3. Perhaps a half-century before, Chrysostom (Homilia habita in magnum hebdomadam 2) had allied the Hosanna exclamation with the exhortation ‘Praise the Lord, O my soul!’ of Psalm 145. See James McKinnon, ed., Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 1987), 83 (no. 175); cf. Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN, 1991), 186. For the Palm Sunday agendas according to other Eastern practices (e.g., Armenian, Georgian and the Anastasis Typikon) see Baldovin, The Urban Character, 77, 80–1, 98.

Den liturgiske eksegese og Grundtvig

Grundtvig and Liturgical ExegesisBy Christian ThodbergLiturgical exegesis is defined as the way in which the Church re-actualised the words and deeds of Jesus in the service of worship in trying to answer the need of the congregation for being simultaneous with the biblical events. In the Western Church this liturgical exegesis received an emphatic exposition in connection with the old series of pericopes in the roman mass and in most of protestant churches as well.Many modem preachers do not like the old lectionary because it is crammed with the stories of Jesus’ miracles which - as they say - have no relevance to churchgoers of today. Grundtvig, however, always met those stories with pleasure, because in his opinion, they dealt with Jesus’ strong deeds in the worship today in baptism and communion. And essentially the biblical readings are worked out on the Sundays before and after the old baptismal terms, either at Easter time, or on the sixth of January, or at Whitsun. Thus baptism is defined in three ways by the three old baptismal terms: on January sixth as a birth with Christ, at Easter as death and resurrection with Christ and at Pentecost as the reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit.The Western system of gospel readings in general survived the Reformation, but in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the account of Christ’s acts of power came under critical scrutiny. They were understood as magical elements, which obscured the character of the bible as the teaching of Christianity. Parallel with this, in the context of the liturgy, the renunciation and the naming of the Devil and the word Hell was removed from the Apostles’ Creed in the baptismal rite and the Annunciation, the Resurrection and the Ascension were understood as images.As an old-fashioned believer, Grundtvig protested against all this. Christianity depended on Christ’s works of power. But despite his faith that the bible was literally God’s word, his problem was this: When and how did God’s word and Christ’s deeds of power touch him personally? Theologically, the question about the presence of God was a problem for Grundtvig throughout his life. In simple terms: Where does God speak to mel Grundtvig’s problem was solved by his famous »unparalleled discovery«, which became the hermeneutic key to his sermons. The thesis of liturgical history scholarship is that liturgical exegesis has its place already in the New Testament, and that the secondary epistles of St. Paul in connection (Ephesians, Colossians) can be rehabilitated, since they give us the key to the understanding of Jesus’ miracles in relations to baptism. In the end it points to Grundtvig’s persistent attempt to find the place where God speaks to him, where he intuitively rediscovers the early church’s understanding of the connection between Jesus’ works of power and baptism, and which thus becomes a contemporary challenge to New Testament scholarship and preaching today.

The complete Bible handbook

This reference book provides a book-by-book breakdown of the Bible as well as background information that brings the Bible stories to life. Photographs show biblical sites as they are today and detailed maps pinpoint where biblical events took place. Also included are devotional paintings and sculptures to assist in interpreting the stories. All denominations of the Christian Church are accommodated, with special sections on Jewish history and different intrepretations of the biblical texts. The reference section includes an A-Z of significant places and important biblical figures, and a glossary of key terms.