The most intriguing aspect of Cormac McCarthy’s writing is the irresistible premonition that his sentences carry an exceptional potential, that after each subsequent reading they surprise us with increasingly deeper layers of meaning, which are often in complete contradiction to the readers’ initial intuitions. His novels belong to the kind that we dream about at night, that follow us and do not let themselves be forgotten. Cormac McCarthy’s prose has been read in the light of a variety of theories, ranging from Marxist criticism, the pastoral tradition, Gnostic theology, the revisionist approach to the American Western, to feminist and eco-critical methodology. The perspective offered in The Evil, the Fated, the Biblical is an existentialist theological approach, which proposes a reading of McCarthy that focuses on the issue of evil and violence as it is dealt with in his novels. “Evil,” unquestionably being a metaphysical category and, as a result, quite commonly pronounced passé, is a challenging and overwhelming topic, which nevertheless deeply concerns all of us. Boguta-Marchel’s book is therefore an attempt to confront a theme that is an unpopular object of scholarly examination and, at the same time, a commonly shared experience in the everyday life of all human beings. The book follows the pattern of an increasingly in-depth analysis of the drama of evil that is omnipresent in McCarthy’s books: from the level of the visual (grotesque images, hyperbolic depictions of violence, cinematic precision of matter-of-fact descriptions), through the level of events (circularity and repetitiveness of action, characters conceptualizing and enacting the struggle between predetermined fate and good will), to the level of the metaphysical (existential crises, grappling with the idea and the person of God, biblical allusions reappearing in the text). This way, The Evil, the Fated, the Biblical provides a complete picture of McCarthy’s contest with one of the most troublesome issues that humanity has ever faced.

"If you are looking for one book to make sense of the problem of evil, this book is for you." Sean McDowell Grasping This Truth Will Change Your View of God Forever If God is good and all-powerful, why doesn't He put a stop to the evil in this world? Christians and non-Christians alike struggle with the concept of a loving God who allows widespread suffering in this life and never-ending punishment in hell. We wrestle with questions such as... Why do bad things happen to good people? Why should we have to pay for Adam's sin? How can eternal judgment be fair? But what if the real problem doesn't start with God...but with us? Clay Jones, an associate professor of Christian apologetics at Biola University, examines what Scripture truly says about the nature of evil and why God allows it. Along the way, he'll help you discover the contrasting abundance of God's grace, the overwhelming joy of heaven, and the extraordinary destiny of believers.

Celebrating the five hundredth volume, this Festschrift honors David M. Gunn, one of the founders of the Journal of Old Testament Studies, later the Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, and offers essays representing cutting-edge interpretations of the David material in the Hebrew Bible and later literary and popular culture. Essays in Part One, Relating to David, present David in relationship to other characters in Samuel. These essays demonstrate the value of close reading, analysis of literary structure, and creative, disciplined readerly imagination in interpreting biblical texts in general and understanding the character of David in particular. Part Two, Reading David, expands the narrative horizon. These essays analyze the use of the David character in larger biblical narrative contexts. David is understood as a literary icon that communicates and disrupts meaning in different ways in different context. More complex modes of interpretation enter in, including theories of metaphor, memory and history, psychoanalysis, and post-colonialism. Part Three, Singing David, shifts the focus to the portrayal of David as singer and psalmist, interweaving in mutually informative ways both with visual evidence from the ancient Near East depicting court musicians and with the titles and language of the biblical psalms. Part Four, Receiving David, highlights moments in the long history of interpretation of the king in popular culture, including poetry, visual art, theatre, and children's literature. Finally, the essays in Part Five, Re-locating David, represent some of the intellectually and ethically vital interpretative work going on in contexts outside the U.S. and Europe.

In the years leading up to the Common Era, the Jewish people drew faith from hundreds of sacred writings, many of which claimed to contain the words of prophets, kings and patriarchs—even Adam. Similarly, the early Christians produced a wealth of texts that the established Church dismissed or branded heretical: they range from legends about the boy Jesus to the mystical Gnostic gospels. Because these powerful, often beautiful works were written out of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, for centuries most remained unknown outside a small circle of theologians and academics. With profound scholarship, Professor J. R. Porter has now gathered these ancient texts in a richly illustrated anthology, pairing translated extracts in accessible, modern language with commentaries that illuminate their character and importance.

Remember when End Time Rewind warned you not to fall for the Doomsday-Rapture theories of Dispensational Premillennialism and their Zionist partners? Well, now that we've survived John Hagee's Four Blood Moons, Jonathan Cahn's Super Shemitah, and the menacing tentacles of the now defunct European Union and Islamic State (the supposed Beast Kingdoms of Revelation 17), the Futurist's next false claim centers around the 70-year anniversary of Israel's founding. Is the Jewish State really the prophetic clock by which God aligns world events and the return of Christ? Many Doomsday-Rapture forecasts have been put forth in the name of Futurism since the 2nd-century AD, none of which have come to fruition. This is disconcerting, because failed predictions and false expectations promoted by our Christian counterparts diminishes the credibility of the Bible and scars the reputation and integrity of the Prophetic Office of Jesus Christ. The age-old, tried-and-true Orthodox (aka Partial or Classical) Preterist approach maintains that the majority of Bible prophecies were already fulfilled by the end of the first century AD, and included Jesus' appearing in an Old Testament-styled, non-physical manifestation with power and great glory. All that remains to be accomplished in the future is for Jesus Christ to physically return to raise the dead (which is when the rapture also occurs), preside over the final judgment, and create a new heaven and earth devoid of sin and death where the new and holy Jerusalem from heaven descends (as per Revelation 20:7 - Revelation 22:5).