This book was born out of a long-standing frustration, due to the observation that a societal silence prevails on existential questions, which we dare not talk about even in our highly interconnected world. As if an embarrassment has seized our interlocutors, struck by a certain metaphysical prudishness as soon as conversation turned to talking about life and death, the meaning of our existence, or fundamental values and their divine or human origin. “Is there life after death?” and “Is there life before death?" are questions that I have never heard raised at the Parliament bar or in a waiting room of the university faculties. This book is the result of a reaction to the deficit of essential questioning at a time when digital and other forms of media inundate society. This writing is not a philosophical essay, nor is it a theological treatise, a sociological manual, a novel, a collection of poems. The truth is that it is all of these at the same time. Hence, the reader must browse the pages of this book with caution and prepare to encounter divergent intellectual landscapes planted with many question marks. Furthermore, since I will thoroughly discuss transcendence and what is hidden behind the visible and in the heart of the homo sapiens, I had to appeal to allegories, metaphors, images, and poetry. Three allegories emerge most forcefully: that of the homo interrogans, the blind monk and that of the palimpsest, three symbolic stories that try to unravel some signals of the mystery of being. The first concerns the discovery made by an expedition of paleontologists in Africa of an anthropoid skeleton that, thanks to the arrangement of the bones, was buried in prehistoric times in the shape of a large question mark. The second allegory is about a blind monk, who knows the contents of all the books in the library and is apparently a visionary. The third one is the story of the discovery of an old parchment in Jerusalem, an enigmatic palimpsest the decoding of which could upset the understanding of our human condition. Moreover, a certain professor J.C Mortal appears who can be considered as the spiritual twin of the author. "Life is a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved," the sage Mahatma Gandhi taught us. Yet in order to grasp the mystery, it is necessary to ask the right questions.

2021 Hugo Award Winner for Best Graphic Story or Comic The follow-up to #1 New York Times Bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, comes Octavia E. Butler’s groundbreaking dystopian novel In this graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, the author portrays a searing vision of America’s future. In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher’s daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny . . . and the birth of a new faith.

This new Pillar volume offers exceptional commentary on Mark that clearly shows the second Gospel though it was a product of the earliest Christian community to be both relevant and sorely needed in today's church. Written by a biblical scholar who has devoted thirty years to the study of the second Gospel, this commentary aims primarily to interpret the Gosepl of Mark according to its theological intentions and purposes, especially as they relate to the life and ministry of Jesus and the call to faith and discipleship. Unique features of James Edwards's approach include clear descriptions of key terms used by Mark and revealing discussion of the Gospel's literary features, including Mark's use of the "sandwich" technique and of imagistic motifs and irony. Edwards also proposes a new paradigm for interpreting the difficult "Little Apocalypse" of chapter 13, and he argues for a new understanding of Mark's controversial ending.

Hedrick contends that parables do not teach moral and religious lessons; they are not, in whole or part, theological figures for the church. Rather, parables are realistic narrative fictions that like all effective fiction literature are designed to draw readers into story worlds where they make discoveries about themselves by finding their ideas challenged and subverted--or affirmed. The parables have endings but not final resolutions, because the endings raise new complications for careful readers, which require further resolution. The narrative contexts and interpretations supplied by the evangelists constitute an attempt by the early church to bring the secular narratives of Jesus under the control of the church's later religious perspectives. Each narrative represents a fragment of Jesus's secular vision of reality. Finding himself outside the mainstream of parables scholarship, both ecclesiastical and critical, Hedrick explored a literary approach to the parables in a series of essays that, among other things, set out the basic rationale for a literary approach to the parables of Jesus. These early essays form the central section of the book. They are published here in edited form along with unpublished critiques of a thoroughgoing literary approach and his response.

Timothy J. Geddert views Mark as a profound theologian and accomplished writer, not a mere compiler of traditions. Mark’s text provokes careful reflection on its subtle and challenging message of hope and its call to faithfully follow Jesus on the way. Mark’s Gospel speaks plainly, yet sometimes in riddles, of God as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Son of God. Mark presents God’s reign, its present hiddenness and future glory, and its surprising way of coming. Mark is also about Jesus and his followers crossing barriers to pass God’s grace on to those formerly excluded. Mark’s resurrection message is open-ended. Readers supply their own ending, not just in words, but by following their resurrected Lord. Includes essays on themes useful for teaching, preaching, and Bible study; bibliographies; charts; two maps; and an index of ancient sources.

A collection of papers from two international symposia by such important scholars as Aune, Dunn, Gerhardsson, Meyer, Rordorf and Talmon. The articles share the conviction that the only way to break the deadlock in the Synoptic problem is to examine the oral tradition about Jesus which lay behind the Gospels, and to continue even beyond them. The book addresses such central issues as the characteristics of oral tradition: oral tradition in Judaism, in the teaching of Jesus (his aphorisms and the narrative meshalim) and in the Gospel narratives; and the relationships of John, Paul and the Didache to oral tradition. This volume should bring onto a new plane the discussion of the all-important oral stage of Gospel tradition.

Ira Brent Driggers examines the character of God as portrayed in the Gospel of Mark, paying particular attention to the way God factors into the unfolding conflict between Jesus and his disciples. Arguing that Mark depicts God as acting in two logically opposite ways, both independently of Jesus (as a distinct character) and through Jesus (possessing him from his baptism), he adds a level of complexity to Mark's portrayal of Jesus and sheds new light on the most enigmatic feature of Mark's narrative: the consistent and troubling misunderstanding of the disciples.