Goliath. You know the story. But why is it in the Bible? Is it just to give us a little moral pick-me-up as we seek to emulate a small shepherd boy who defeated a giant? Have you ever wondered where Goliath came from? Did you know he had brothers, one with 24 fingers and toes? Did you know their ancestry is steeped in unimaginable horror? Genesis 6. The nephilim. The first few verses of this chapter have long been the speculation of supernatural events that produced demigods and a flood that God used to destroy the whole world. The whole world remembers them. Once upon a time, all Christians knew them. But for many centuries this view was mocked, though it was the only known view at the time of the writing of the New Testament. Today, it is making a resurgence among Bible-believing scholars, and for good reason. The nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward... This book delves deep into the dark and ancient recesses of our past to bring you rich treasures long buried. It is a carefully researched, heavily footnoted, and selectively illustrated story of the giants of the Bible. There is more here than meets the eye, much more. Here you will learn the invisible, supernatural storyline of the Bible that is always just beneath the surface, lurking like the spawn of the ancient leviathan. It is a storyline no person can afford to ignore any longer. Unlike other more sensational books on the topic, there is no undue speculation to be found here. The author is a Bible-believing Christian who refuses to use such ideas to tell you the end of the world is drawing nigh. Once you discover the truth about these fantastic creatures, you will come to see the ministry and work of Jesus Christ in a very new and exalting light. Come. Learn the fascinating, sobering, yet true story of real giants who played a significant role in the bible ... and still do so today.

In antiquity, “son of god”—meaning a ruler designated by the gods to carry out their will—was a title used by the Roman emperor Augustus and his successors as a way to reinforce their divinely appointed status. But this title was also used by early Christians to speak about Jesus, borrowing the idiom from Israelite and early Jewish discourses on monarchy. This interdisciplinary volume explores what it means to be God’s son(s) in ancient Jewish and early Christian literature. Through close readings of relevant texts from multiple ancient corpora, including the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Greco-Roman texts and inscriptions, early Christian and Islamic texts, and apocalyptic literature, the chapters in this volume engage a range of issues including messianism, deification, eschatological figures, Jesus, interreligious polemics, and the Roman and Jewish backgrounds of early Christianity and the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The essays in this collection demonstrate that divine sonship is an ideal prism through which to better understand the deep interrelationship of ancient religions and their politics of kingship and divinity. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Richard Bauckham, Max Botner, George J. Brooke, Jan Joosten, Menahem Kister, Reinhard Kratz, Mateusz Kusio, Michael A. Lyons, Matthew V. Novenson, Michael Peppard, Sarah Whittle, and N. T. Wright.

In this ambitious and venturesome book, Peter W. Rose applies the insights of Marxist theory to a number of central Greek literary and philosophical texts. He explores major points in the trajectory from Homer to Plato where the ideology of inherited excellence—beliefs about descent from gods or heroes—is elaborated and challenged. Rose offers subtle and penetrating new readings of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Pindar's Tenth Pythian Ode, Aeschylus's Oresteia, Sophokles' Philoktetes, and Plato's Republic. Rose rejects the view of art as a mere reflection of social and political reality—a view that is characteristic not only of most Marxist but of most historically oriented treatments of classical literature. He applies instead a Marxian hermeneutic derived from the work of the Frankfurt School and Fredric Jameson. His readings focus on illuminating a politics of form within the text, while responding to historically specific social, political, and economic realities. Each work, he asserts, both reflects contemporary conflicts over wealth, power, and gender roles and constitutes an attempt to transcend the status quo by projecting an ideal community. Following Marx, Rose maintains that critical engagement with the limitations of the utopian dreams of the past is the only means to the realization of freedom in the present. Classicists and their students, literary theorists, philosophers, comparatists, and Marxist critics will find Sons of the Gods, Children of Earth challenging reading.

"Modupe Oduyoye knows the rules of biblical criticism set down by the scholars of Europe and North America, and he draws upon them to good effect. Yet when he chooses to read the Hebrew Bible through the eyes of African creation myth and with the tongue of the Hamitic language group, the effect is extraordinary. Without attempting to solve the complex riddle of all that Jerusalem of old had to do with Ethiopia and East Africa, Oduyoye persuasively shows that the exquisite sensitivity of African religion to the realm of the spirit is a living witness to a biblical consciousness much richer and more pluralistic than we had realized. We ignore to our impoverishment and even our peril, Oduyoye believes, this biblical sense of human participation in the divine vitality and of spiritual kinship among the creatures." --W. Sibley Towner, Professor of Biblical Interpretation, Union Theological Seminary "Modupe Oduyoye presents a fascinating study in the area of biblical interpretation in drawing upon biblical and West African languages. This is a work that ought to stimulate thought and make African theologians more receptive to the call to take a fresh look at the Bible against the background of African life and thought." --Kwesi A. Dickson, Professor of Old Testament Studies, Director of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana "There is much in Modupe Oduyoye's book that is explosive of our Western biblical theological ethnocentricity. This book is another heralding of the West African school, which will have our skills but use them according to ground rules they are working out, a school that will take its place with the Mexican, the Tamil, and many others. As the tide recedes from the West, it is good to hear the surge and thunder of the African shore." --Noel A. King, Professor of History and Comparative Religion, University of California at Santa Cruz Modupe Oduyoye is a Nigerian exegete and philologist. He was William Paton Fellow at the Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham, 1981-82. He presently serves as the Literature Secretary of the Christian Council of Nigeria and as Manager of the Daystar Press in Ibadan.

Siege? Bomb threat? Terrorist alert? Shooting spree? The Sons of God are who Australia turns to in times of extreme crisis. The SOG's top-secret methods, advanced training and incredible bravery have made them the ultimate urban warriors in the war against high-level crime and terrorism. This book details the birth of the 'Sons of God' and revisits 12 dramatic incidents: the Port Arthur Massacre, the bombing of Victorian Police headquarters, a wild gun battle with Neo-Nazis and more. All are told in the voices of the 'Sons' who were in the maelstrom, did their duty and somehow came out alive.Author Heath O'Loughlin is the son of a 'Sons of God' commander. He watched his bomb technician father leave the house on 'calls outs', never knowing where he was going or if he would return. Heath has been given exclusive and privileged access to SOG case files and interviewed 19 'Sons', all of whom are going on the record for the first time, narrating their hell-raising and heretofore secret adventures in high-octane recollections guaranteed to give readers a feel of what it was to be there.

From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • In this taut, chilling story, Lester Ballard—a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape—haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail. While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance. "Like the novelists he admires-Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner-Cormac McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." —Washington Post Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

A profound exploration of how to hold on to hope when our unchanging faith collides with a changing culture, from two respected Christian storytellers and thought leaders. “Offers neither spin control nor image maintenance for the evangelical tribe, but genuine hope.”—Russell Moore, president of ERLC As the pressures of health warnings, economic turmoil, and partisan politics continue to rise, the influence of gospel-focused Christians seems to be waning. In the public square and popular opinion, we are losing our voice right when it’s needed most for Christ’s glory and the common good. But there’s another story unfolding too—if you know where to look. In Gospelbound, Collin Hansen and Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra counter these growing fears with a robust message of resolute hope for anyone hungry for good news. Join them in exploring profound stories of Christians who are quietly changing the world in the name of Jesus—from the wild world of digital media to the stories of ancient saints and unsung contemporary activists on the frontiers of justice and mercy. Discover how, in these dark times, the light of Jesus shines even brighter. You haven’t heard the whole story. And that’s good news.