An examination of current methodologies for writing Israel's history.

What led so many German Protestant theologians to welcome the Nazi regime and its policies of racism and anti-Semitism? In this provocative book, Robert P. Ericksen examines the work and attitudes of three distinguished, scholarly, and influential theologians who greeted the rise of Hitler with enthusiasm and support. In so doing, he shows how National Socialism could appeal to well-meaning and intelligent people in Germany and why the German university and church were so silent about the excesses and evil that confronted them. "This book is stimulating and thought-provoking....The issues it raises range well beyond the confines of the case-studies of the three theologians examined and have relevance outside the particular context of Hitler's Germany....That the book compels the reader to rethink some important questions about the susceptibility of intelligent human beings to as distasteful a phenomenon as fascism is an important achievement."--Ian Kershaw, History Today "Ericksen's study...throws light on the kinds of perversion to which Christian beliefs and attitudes are easily susceptible, and is therefore timely and useful." --Gordon D. Kaufman, Los Angeles Times "An understanding and carefully documented study."--Ernst C. Helmreich, American Historical Review "This dark book poses a number of social, economic and cultural questions that one has to answer before condemning Kittel, Althaus and Hirsch."--William Griffin, Publishers Weekly "A highly competent, well written book."--Tim Bradshaw, Churchman

An excellent, single-volume Catholic dictionary of the Bible written by respected Catholic Biblical scholar John L. McKenzie S. J. and originally published in 1965. Fr. John L. McKenzie, S.J., (1910-1991) was an acclaimed Catholic Scripture scholar who wrote numerous books and was the first Catholic scholar on the Divinity School faculty. He was at one time president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America and president of the Society of Biblical Literature. His Dictionary of the Bible is the best one-volume orthodox Catholic Bible dictionary available in the English language—it’s an essential reference tool that should be on the shelf of every good Catholic library. A standard reference work, providing concise descriptions of biblical characters, terms, and places, as well as pertinent illustrations and charts, this is “one of the most up-to-date and reliable dictionaries of the Bible in any language.…Magnificent in scholarship, ample in learning, frank and unhesitating in facing all the difficulties and problems, sympathetic with the varieties and diversities of other views” (Religious Education).

Challenging beliefs about intellectual culture, Makdisi reaffirms the links between Western and Arabic thought and shows that although scholasticism and humanism have long been considered to be exclusive to the Western world, they have their roots in the medieval Islamic world.

This book examines the social formation and ideological practices of William Foxwell Albright, the gifted Johns Hopkins linguist and archaeologist who, along with a fiercely loyal and organized group of former students, exerted uncommon influence on the substance and direction of mid-twentieth century biblical studies. Albright and these devoted students (such as G. Ernest Wright, Frank Moore Cross, Jr., David Noel Freedman, John Bright, George E. Mendenhall) came to be known as the &"Albright School.&" Burke Long here treats the field of biblical studies, not as a repository of objective knowledge, but as a culture created by like-minded people whose knowledge is mediated through the ideologically charged give-and-take of social interactions. A first of its kind for biblical studies, Planting and Reaping Albright draws on private letters, interviews, and published work to expose ideological presuppositions and political machinations embedded in historical knowledge about the Bible that this group of scholars constructed and disseminated through its various activities. Long investigates Albright's many assumptions about the &"way things really are&" and the ways in which his students, describing themselves as &"sons of Albright,&" embarked on a crusade to secure political and ideological dominance of the landscape of American biblical scholarship. The Albright School constituted a sociological phenomenon that had lasting consequences for American intellectual history and scholarship. Accordingly, this book suggests ways in which Albright, or a social realization of Albright, was present in, and presented to, a culture of generational and ideological solidarity.

It presents a vision of Israel as an epistemological rather than an ontological entity; a perspective on the world rather than an entity in it. >

Donald Wiebe critically examines the pervasive assumption that theology is a form of religious thought that is both compatible with and supportive of religious faith. The irony, he argues, is that theology is in fact detrimental to religion and the religious way of life.