Christians cannot ignore the intersection of religion and violence. In our own Scriptures, war texts that appear to approve of genocidal killings and war rape raise hard questions about biblical ethics and the character of God. Have we missed something in our traditional readings? Identifying a spectrum of views on biblical war texts, Webb and Oeste pursue a middle path using a hermeneutic of incremental, redemptive-movement ethics.

This volume by William J. Webb explores the hermeneutical maze that accompanies any treatment of these three controversial topics and takes a new step toward breaking down walls within the evangelical community related to them.

This book uses the history of Breathitt County, Kentucky, to examine political violence in the United States and its interpretation in media and memory. Violence in Breathitt County, during and after the Civil War, usually reflected what was going on elsewhere in Kentucky and the American South. In turn, the types of violence recorded there corresponded with discernible political scenarios.

A number of texts in the Hebrew Bible consistently command attention and yet defy easy explanation: Why did God try to kill Moses? Why did God kill the man who touched the ark to keep it from falling? Why did God put a tree in the middle of the Garden? David Penchansky tackles these tough questions and in so doing opens up for readers a new understanding of how the Hebrew Bible portrays God. Penchansky examines six biblical narratives that depict God negatively, outlining their social, political, and theological ramifications. He believes the stories provide an important key to the Israelites' understanding of their God. He also believes the stories provide a structure for understanding experiences of evil and suffering within our own century, and for accepting the ambiguity that permeates all human existence. - Christian Book Center.

An award-winning author chronicles the settling of the Ohio River Valley, home to the defiant Shawnee Indians, who vow to defend their land against the seemingly unstoppable. They came on foot and by horseback, in wagons and on rafts, singly and by the score, restless, adventurous, enterprising, relentless, seeking a foothold on the future. European immigrants and American colonists, settlers and speculators, soldiers and missionaries, fugitives from justice and from despair—pioneers all, in the great and inexorable westward expansion defined at its heart by the majestic flow of the Ohio River. This is their story, a chronicle of monumental dimension, of resounding drama and impact set during a pivotal era in our history: the birth and growth of a nation. Drawing on a wealth of research, both scholarly and anecdotal—including letters, diaries, and journals of the era—Allan W. Eckert has delivered a landmark of historical authenticity, unprecedented in scope and detail.

The myth of the peace-loving "noble savage" is persistent and pernicious. Indeed, for the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, unimportant, and, like smallpox, a disease of civilized societies alone. Prehistoric warfare, according to this view, was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild. Lawrence Keeley's groundbreaking War Before Civilization offers a devastating rebuttal to such comfortable myths and debunks the notion that warfare was introduced to primitive societies through contact with civilization (an idea he denounces as "the pacification of the past"). Building on much fascinating archeological and historical research and offering an astute comparison of warfare in civilized and prehistoric societies, from modern European states to the Plains Indians of North America, War Before Civilization convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was in fact more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. To support this point, Keeley provides a wide-ranging look at warfare and brutality in the prehistoric world. He reveals, for instance, that prehistorical tactics favoring raids and ambushes, as opposed to formal battles, often yielded a high death-rate; that adult males falling into the hands of their enemies were almost universally killed; and that surprise raids seldom spared even women and children. Keeley cites evidence of ancient massacres in many areas of the world, including the discovery in South Dakota of a prehistoric mass grave containing the remains of over 500 scalped and mutilated men, women, and children (a slaughter that took place a century and a half before the arrival of Columbus). In addition, Keeley surveys the prevalence of looting, destruction, and trophy-taking in all kinds of warfare and again finds little moral distinction between ancient warriors and civilized armies. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, he examines the evidence of cannibalism among some preliterate peoples. Keeley is a seasoned writer and his book is packed with vivid, eye-opening details (for instance, that the homicide rate of prehistoric Illinois villagers may have exceeded that of the modern United States by some 70 times). But he also goes beyond grisly facts to address the larger moral and philosophical issues raised by his work. What are the causes of war? Are human beings inherently violent? How can we ensure peace in our own time? Challenging some of our most dearly held beliefs, Keeley's conclusions are bound to stir controversy.

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. To answer the question of what role the New Testament should play in the formation and expression of Christian social morality today, Richard Longenecker here proposes a developmental hermeneutic, which distinguishes between "declared principles" and "described practices" in the New Testament writings. With this distinction in mind, he focuses on the three couplets of Galatians 3:28 -- "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female" -- showing how these matters were treated in early Christian thought and explaining their meaning for us today. In so doing, Longenecker lays a hermeneutical foundation for the much larger discussion of Christian social ethics.