New York Times Bestseller! Kathie Lee Gifford and Rabbi Jason Sobel the authors of the New York Times best seller The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi bring you an exciting new life-changing message that will help you read the Bible with new eyes and take you into the heart of God's people in Scripture - from Abraham to Ruth to Jesus and His early followers. In The God of the Way, Rabbi Jason shares wisdom from his Jewish heritage and helps us read Scripture in the cultural context of biblical times. Kathie Lee adds personal stories and reflections from her spiritual journey and studies, serving as a companion as you go deeper in your own relationship with God. You will experience: The God of the How and When: When you don't know the details...God does. The God of His Word: When you can't see God...trust His heart and the promises in His Word. The God Who Sees: When you feel abandoned and forgotten...God knows and cares about you. The God of the Other Side: When you feel overwhelmed and unworthy...God never passes by but crosses over and brings freedom. Journey into God's word, from the creation of the world through the desert and empty places, the Hebrew nation, and meet Jesus, the disciples, and his followers. As you do, you will see how you are part of God's epic story of redemption - a radiant testimony to the truth that belief in God's promises is never wasted.

He's the most important person in human history--and Understanding Jesus: A Guide to His Life and Times makes His teaching and impact clearer than ever. More than any other Bible character, Jesus is the person both Christians and non-Christians admire and want to better understand. From Stephen M. Miller, author of the bestselling Who's Who and Where's Where in the Bible, this black-and-white paperback reference details the life of Christ, His teachings, and the faith He introduced to the world. You'll love Miller's casual, easy-to-read journalistic style, as he sets the story in the Roman world where Jesus lived, adding new insights from archaeology and ancient history. Fascinating sidebars and a complete topical index round out this important book.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Walking the Bible and Abraham comes a revelatory journey across four continents and 4,000 years exploring how Adam and Eve introduced the idea of love into the world, and how they continue to shape our deepest feelings about relationships, family, and togetherness. Since antiquity, one story has stood at the center of every conversation about men and women. One couple has been the battleground for human relationships and sexual identity. That couple is Adam and Eve. Yet instead of celebrating them, history has blamed them for bringing sin, deceit, and death into the world. In this fresh retelling of their story, New York Times columnist and PBS host Bruce Feiler travels from the Garden of Eden in Iraq to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, from John Milton's London to Mae West's Hollywood, discovering how Adam and Eve should be hailed as exemplars of a long-term, healthy, resilient relationship. At a time of discord and fear over the strength of our social fabric, Feiler shows how history's first couple can again be role models for unity, forgiveness, and love. Containing all the humor, insight, and wisdom that have endeared Bruce Feiler to readers around the world, The First Love Story is an unforgettable journey that restores Adam and Eve to their rightful place as central figures in our culture's imagination and reminds us that even our most familiar stories still have the ability to surprise, inspire, and guide us today.

In this “compulsively readable exploration of the tangled world of Christian origins” ( Publishers Weekly ), religious historian James Tabor illuminates the earliest years of Jesus’ teachings before Paul shaped them into the religion we know today. This fascinating examination of the earliest years of Christianity reveals how the man we call St. Paul shaped Christianity as we know it today. Historians know almost nothing about the two decades following the crucifixion of Jesus, when his followers regrouped and began to spread his message. During this time Paul joined the movement and began to preach to the gentiles. Using the oldest Christian documents that we have—the letters of Paul—as well as other early Chris­tian sources, historian and scholar James Tabor reconstructs the origins of Christianity. Tabor shows how Paul separated himself from Peter and James to introduce his own version of Christianity, which would continue to develop independently of the message that Jesus, James, and Peter preached. Paul and Jesus illuminates the fascinating period of history when Christianity was born out of Judaism.

Join beloved Bible teacher Margaret Feinberg as you learn how to move from simply reading Scripture to entering stories that can be touched, tasted, smelled, and savored. The Bible is full of clever plots and compelling stories, laced with historic insights and literary beauty. But despite its richness and depth, many of us struggle to close the gap between the ancient world and our own. What does it mean to know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd when the only place you've encountered sheep is at a petting zoo How can you understand the promise of a land overflowing with honey when you buy yours in a bear-shaped bottle Can you truly grasp the urgency of Jesus' invitation to abide in the vine when you shop for grapes at a local grocery store In Scouting the Divine, Margaret invites you to accompany her on the adventure of a lifetime across the nation to herd sheep in Oregon, harvest fields with a Nebraska farmer, prune vines in California, and explore hives with a veteran beekeeper in Colorado. Along the way, you'll explore how ancient livelihoods illuminate meaningful truths that apply to life today. With Margaret's trademark humor and vulnerability, you'll: Learn the secret of how to live like you have a shepherd Unlock the sweetest promises of God Discover the gift of divine timing Scouting the Divine will revolutionize the way you understand the Bible--and leave you wonderstruck by the magnificence of God.

Formerly one of the largest and most militant Islamic organizations in the Middle East, Egypt's al-Gama'ah al-Islamiyah is believed to have played an instrumental role in numerous acts of global terrorism, including the assassination of President Anwar Sadat and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In later years, however, the organization issued a surprising renunciation of violence, repudiating its former ideology and replacing it with a shari'ah -based understanding and assessment of the purpose and proper application of jihad. This key manifesto of modern Islamist thought is now available to an English-speaking audience in an eminently readable translation by noted Islamic scholar Sherman A. Jackson. Unlike other Western and Muslim critiques of violent extremism, this important work emerges from within the movement of Middle Eastern Islamic activism, both challenging and enriching prevailing notions about the role of Islamists in fighting the scourge of extremist politics, blind anti-Westernism, and, alas, wayward jihad.

Jacob Milgrom was a man of deep faith and deep learning. As teacher and scholar he is best known for his work on ancient Israel's religion, especially its cultic expression in tabernacle and temple. His command of this subject is evident in his massive, three-volume commentary on Leviticus (Anchor Bible Commentary) and his commentary on Numbers (JPS Torah Commentary). This provides perfect background for one who seeks to instruct us on the final chapters of Ezekiel. In this volume Milgrom guides us engagingly through Ezekiel's oracle against Gog (chs. 38-39) and his final vision of Israel's physical and spiritual restoration (chs. 40-48). Regrettably Professor Milgrom did not live to see his work on Ezekiel appear in print. Given his influence on biblical scholarship far beyond his native Jewish world, it is fitting that this final form of this project be cast as an interfaith dialogue with Daniel Block, who has himself written a major two-volume commentary on Ezekiel (NICOT). This volume offers a window into how one Jewish scholar engaged with the work of a Christian scholar. It invites readers to listen in on their conversation, in the course of which they will also hear the voices of medieval Jewish rabbis, particularly R. Eliezer of Beaugency and R. Joseph Kara. While Block and Milgrom are free to disagree in their reading of particular texts, readers will find this dialogue illuminating for their own understanding of the last chapters of Ezekiel.

Note to readers: The New Testament Code Companion only contains the newly revised endnotes; original pictures, genealogical charts, and maps from Robert Eisenman's classic work. This text is designed for those who wish a side-by-side comparative experience with the end materials as they read the original text. The New Testament Code Companion is only available in print. The material in this text is contained within the eBook edition of The New Testament Code. In The New Testament Code: The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christ world-renowned scholar and bestselling author Robert Eisenman uncovers the Truth and unravels the real code behind New Testament allusions like "this is the Cup of the New Covenant in my blood" and connects them to "the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus" and "drinking the Cup of the Wrath of God" in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In doing so, Eisenman demonstrates the integral relationship of James the Brother of Jesus to the Righteous Teacher of the Dead Sea Scrolls, deciphers the way the picture of "Jesus" was put together in the Gospels, and clarifies the real history of Palestine in the first century and, as a consequence, what can be known about the real "Jesus." In paring away the traces of Greco-Roman anti-Semitism-which were deliberately introduced into "this picture" thereby tainting Western history ever since-The New Testament Code shows what happened in Palestine in that time, not what the enemies of those making war against Rome wanted people to think happened. In making these arguments and exposing these revisions, overwrites, and falsifications that were introduced into the New Testament, Eisenman also explains the esoteric meaning of many of the usages with which we are all so familiar in the Western World. In doing so, he identifies the Scrolls as the literature of 'the Messianic Movement in Palestine' and 'decodes' many well-known and beloved sayings in the Gospels such as, "Every Plant which My Heavenly Father has not planted shall be uprooted," "Do not throw Holy Things to dogs," "A man shall not be known by what goes into his mouth but, rather, by what comes out of it," and "These are the signs that the Lord did in Cana of Galilee." Offering a thorough and in-depth, point-by-point analysis of James' relationship to the Dead Sea Scrolls, he illumines such subjects as the "Pella Flight," "the Wilderness Camps," and Paul as an "Herodian," exposing Peter's true historical role as "a prototypical Essene," who was used in the Gospels and the Book of Acts as a mouthpiece for Anti-Semitism, and demonstrating how, once we have found the Historical James, we have found the Historical Jesus. He covers new archaeological discoveries along the Dead Sea, AMS radiocarbon dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the controversial almost miraculous appearance of the "James Ossuary" (which he considers having been based on his book on James) and the reasons for its being considered a fraud. A crucial new point that emerges in The New Testament Code is the identification of the document known as the MMT as a Letter from James to someone early Church Fathers call the "Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates." Readers will not be disappointed.

This volume collects the best of recent research and classic essays on the Primeval History, including several articles that have not appeared heretofore in English. The articles provide students and scholars with easy access to significant scholarship illuminating both the world outside the text and the world within the text.