How Repentance Became Biblical explores the rise of repentance as a concept within early forms of Judaism and Christianity and how it has informed the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. It develops alternative accounts for many of the ancient phenomena identified as penitential.

All people have sinned and broken God's law. None of us are good (Rom. 3:10). And as a result of our sin, God commands us to repent. But what does repentance look like? In this booklet, Dr. R.C. Sproul looks at several people in the Bible and how they give us a model of repentance. Dr. Sproul explains that true repentance is not simply a religious ritual or the resolve to do better next time. Rather, it's a spiritual conversion in which we turn from our sin and to God in faith. The Crucial Questions booklet series by Dr. R.C. Sproul offers succinct answers to important questions often asked by Christians and thoughtful inquirers.

This book explores the theme of the missional conversion of the church, namely how the church is transformed toward its missionary vocation, from a biblical-theological perspective. The purpose of this book is to find biblically grounded, theologically sound, and practically applicable principles helpful for the church which seeks to be continuously shaped into a missional community which authentically and fully participates in God's mission today. The biblical-theological findings on how the triune God in the biblical narrative shapes the people of God toward their missionary vocation demonstrates, first, that, in Scripture, the missional conversion of the church is primarily the consequence of its continuous encounter with the triune God, and, second, that this divine-human encounter for the missional conversion of the church is ineluctable in view of the ongoing tension between the missional faithfulness of God in fulfilling the missionary vocation of the church, on the one hand, and the missional failure of the church in its missionary vocation, on the other hand.

In a world in which genuine forgiveness seems as rare a commodity as ever, this collection of essays offers an opportunity to explore where and in what forms forgiveness may be found in the Hebrew Bible—a text which is foundational for Western religions and the cultures they have influenced over the last two millennia. In the wake of renewed interest in forgiveness in antiquity and recent suggestions that it bears little resemblance to modern conceptions, this book investigates the ways in which the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament itself conceptualizes forgiveness. How and in what ways does God forgive? Where, if at all, do we see reconciliation between people in the Old Testament, and what does it look like?

Spirit possession is more commonly associated with late Second Temple Jewish literature and the New Testament than it is with the Hebrew Bible. In Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible, however, Reed Carlson argues that possession is also depicted in this earlier literature, though rarely according to the typical western paradigm. This new approach utilizes theoretical models developed by cultural anthropologists and ethnographers of contemporary possession-practicing communities in the global south and its diasporas. Carlson demonstrates how possession in the Bible is a corporate and cultivated practice that can function as social commentary and as a means to model the moral self. The author treats a variety of spirit phenomena in the Hebrew Bible, including spirit language in the Psalms and Job, spirit empowerment in Judges and Samuel, and communal possession in the prophets. Carlson also surveys apotropaic texts and spirit myths in early Jewish literature—including the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this volume, two recent scholarly trends in biblical studies converge: investigations into notions of evil and of the self. The result is a synthesizing project, useful to biblical scholars and those of early Judaism and Christianity alike.

'It has been slowly dawning on me over many years that there is a fundamental problem deep at the heart of Christian faith and practice as I have known them . . . we have all forgotten what the four Gospels are about.' With that surprising assertion, Tom Wright launches this ground-breaking work in which he helps us to see the gospel story in radically a new light, and to acknowledge that, for many generations, the Church has been avoiding its full impact and holding back from proclaiming its full meaning. 'Classic Wright: clear, accessible, robust, engaging and challenging.' Paula Gooder in Third Way 'Scholarly, accessible, insightful and provocative.' Christianity 'Wright argues compellingly that the twin themes of kingdom and cross are inseparably linked. . . This is a much-needed reorientation. The book makes its case for 'rethinking' cogently and deserves widespread attention.' Theology

Shows how biblical authors, like more recent architects of national identities, constructed identity in direct relation to memories of war.