The book of Genesis might be the most Darwinian text of the ancient world. Can the ideas of Scripture and evolutionary science be mutually illuminating? Biblical scholar Dru Johnson calls us beyond creation-versus-evolution debates to explore the continuities and discontinuities between biblical themes and those of Darwin and modern science.
God has a bad reputation. Many think of God as wrathful and angry, smiting people for no apparent reason. But the story is more complicated than that. Without minimizing the sometimes harsh realities of the biblical record, David Lamb unpacks the complexity of the Old Testament and assembles an overall picture that gives coherence to our understanding of God in both Old and New Testaments.
One of the most challenging passages in the book of Job is the Lord's long description of a hippopotamus and crocodile. In this NSBT, Eric Ortlund argues that Behemoth and Leviathan are better understood as symbols of cosmic chaos and evil, helping readers appreciate the reward of Job's faith (and ours) as we endure in trusting God while living in an unredeemed creation.
Through the orienting lens of nexus passages, biblical scholar Kevin Chen offers a constructive, evangelical approach to the Old Testament that is both exegetical and intertextual. In this thorough analysis, Chen shows how these nexus passages serve as lexical, thematic, and theological hubs for understanding the Old Testament.
In this ESBT volume, Stephen Dempster traces the themes of kingship and kingdom throughout Scripture, illuminating the challenges, pain, and ultimate hope that the Bible offers. The story of God's kingship is ultimately the fulfillment of a promise to defeat sin and death and to establish a world of peace and justice.
Discussion about God's work of creation are often overwhelmed by questions such as the age of the earth and the relationship between divine creation and evolution. Without completely ignoring these issues, this rigorously grounded theological interpretation of Genesis 1 engages thinkers like Plato, Martin Luther, and Karl Barth.
The closely related biblical themes of covenant and law are among the most important in Scripture. In this ESBT volume, Brandon Crowe considers these themes throughout both Old and New Testaments, laying out key principles such as our obligation to obey our Creator, how Jesus' perfect obedience to God's law opens the way to eternal life, and what the law means for us today.
Is it really possible to enjoy the Old Testament? Eric Seibert understands why many Christians find this part of the Bible confusing, theologically troubling, or just uninteresting. Offering dozens of practical exercises for hands-on interaction with the text, this unique resource equips readers with a variety of creative approaches to bring even the seemingly dry passages to life.
How do we think about the theology of the book of Jeremiah? John Goldingay considers the prophet Jeremiah himself, his individual circumstances and those of Judah, and his message. As we view the book of Jeremiah in its entirety, we learn about God, Israel as the people of God, the nature of wrongdoing and prophecy, and what we know about the future.
In the biblical canon, two books lack any explicit reference to the name of God: Song of Songs and Esther. What is the nature of God as revealed in texts that don't use his name? Exploring the often overlooked theological connections between these two Old Testament books, Chloe T. Sun takes on the challenges of God's absence and explores how we think of God when he is perceived to be silent.