There is hardly a person who doesn’t know someone dealing with a disability, disease, chronic illness, or other form of personal suffering. The Beyond Suffering Bible is the first study Bible to directly address those who suffer and the people who love and care for them. From bestselling author, singer, and radio host Joni Eareckson Tada and the experts at Joni and Friends Christian Institute on Disability, the Beyond Suffering Bible is filled with thousands of notes and features that invite readers into a conversation about suffering and its place in each person’s life. Each feature has been carefully created to provide readers with valuable information, meaningful encouragement, and challenging applications as they encounter God’s Word.

Archaeological exploration in the Central Highlands of the Southern Levant conducted during the 1970s and 1980s dramatically transformed the scholarly understanding of the early Iron Age and led to the publication of From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, by Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na’aman. This volume explores and reassesses the legacy of that foundational text. Using current theoretical frameworks and taking into account new excavation data and methodologies from the natural sciences, the seventeen essays in this volume examine the archaeology of the Southern Levant during the early Iron Age and the ways in which the period may be reflected in biblical accounts. The variety of methodologies employed and the historical narratives presented within these contributions illuminate the multifaceted nature of contemporary research on this formative period. Building upon Finkelstein and Na’aman’s seminal study, this work provides an essential update. It will be welcomed by ancient historians, scholars of early Israel and the early Iron Age Southern Levant, and biblical scholars. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Eran Arie, Erez Ben-Yosef, Cynthia Edenburg, Israel Finkelstein, Yuval Gadot, Assaf Kleiman, Gunnar Lehmann, Defna Langgut, Aren M. Maeir, Nadav Na’aman, Thomas Römer, Lidar Sapir-Hen, Katja Soennecken, Dieter Vieweger, Ido Wachtel, and Naama Yahalom-Mack.

Comparing the politics of Judaism and Islam, this book demonstrates that common religious political party characteristics in Israel and Turkey can be as striking as their differences.

Contemplation is a spiritual process involving long, thoughtful, steady, serious, and attentive consideration or observation in order to achieve closer unity with God and to discover and understand God's will for the contemplative. Contemplation gives rise to activity, and activity, in turn, gives rise to more contemplation. The result of contemplation is often called discernment, seeing clearly what is at first not very clear or obvious, understanding what is not immediately obvious, resulting in accuracy of spiritual perception. Divine discernment is contemplation in action; it results in insight, inspiration, and an awareness of inner truth upon which one must act. While there are countless models of contemplation leading to action, the ninth-century BCE prophets Elijah and Elisha are the examples used in this book. Both are seers, messengers, and heralds of the LORD. They appear in activity when they are needed, and they disappear into solitude and silence when they are not.

New results and interpretations challenging the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean Ancient Western Asia Beyond the Paradigm of Collapse and Regeneration (1200–900 BCE) presents select essays originating in a two-year research collaboration between New York University and Paris Sciences et Lettres. The contributions here offer new results and interpretations of the processes and outcomes of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age in three broad regions: Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia, and the Levant. Together, these challenge the notion of a uniform, macroregional collapse throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, followed by the regeneration of political powers. Current research on newly discovered or reinterpreted textual and material evidence from Western Asia instead suggests that this transition was characterized by a diversity of local responses emerging from diverse environmental settings and culture complexes, as evident in the case studies collected here in history, archaeology, and art history. The editors avoid particularism by adopting a regional organization, with the aim of identifying and tracing similar processes and outcomes emerging locally across the three regions. Ultimately, this volume reimagines the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition as the emergence of a set of recursive processes and outcomes nested firmly in the local cultural interactions of western Asia before the beginning of the new, unifying era of Assyrian imperialism.

This congress volume of the Minerva Center for the Relations between Israel and Aram in Biblical Times combines theoretical approaches to historical research on autonomy or independence in ancient cultures and then presents articles which study the subject using Aram and Israel in antiquity as examples. These articles show clearly how strongly Syria and Palestine were linked to one another and how they constituted one single cultural region which was connected by its economy, politics, language, religion, and culture. Contributors: Dominik Bonatz, Amit Dagan, Jan Dietrich, Adi Eliyahu-Behar, Esther Eshel, Israel Finkelstein, Christian Frevel, Leeor Gottlieb, Shuichi Hasegawa, John Healey, Assaf Kleiman, Gunnar Lehmann, Yuval Levavi, Yigal Levin, Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, Robert A. Mullins, Herbert Niehr, Eckart Otto, Nava Panitz-Cohen, Thomas Romer, Omer Sergi, David Smith, Ian Stern, Abraham Tal, Yifat Thareani, Karel van der Toorn, Nili Wazana, Paul Weirich, Vanessa Workman, Christoph Wulf, Naama Yahalom-Mac

In this study, Assaf Kleiman discusses the settlement history and material culture of complex communities that flourished in the shadow of Israel and Aram-Damascus. A detailed examination of the finds from the Lebanese Beqaa, through the Sea of Galilee, to the Irbid Plateau, offers an exceptional portrayal of the developments experienced by these communities, before and after the emergence of the territorial kingdoms; these advances include the rise and fall of local polities, the adoption and rejection of certain cultural traits, and even the background for the dissemination of writing. The study provides, therefore, a new and exciting way to look at the political relations and cultural exchange between the indigenous communities and the elites that ruled over them. Rather than interpreting the local populations simply as "Israelites" or "Aramaeans," the archaeological record reveals their diversity and highlights the discrete historical trajectories they followed from the 12th to 8th centuries BCE.