Books

HarperCollins eBook Promotion

Most of my readers have already seen this announcement, but it is worth sharing widely. I have purchased several of these myself. They are available in almost all eBook formats: iBookstore, Kindle, Google, Nook, and Kobo.

To celebrate the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature’s annual conference in HarperOne’s hometown of San Francisco—we’ve put together a special eBook promotion. So, load up on your reading for the plane! Even if you can’t attend the conference, you can still get this “stack” of great e-books at a great price! Hurry! This offer expires on November 13, 2011.

10 great books! $3.99 each!

Here’s your chance to rediscover your favorite authors in an eBook format:

THE HISTORICAL JESUS by John Dominic Crossan
THE BIRTH OF CHRISTIANITY by John Dominic Crossan
GOD’S PROBLEM by Bart Ehrman
THE MEANING OF JESUS by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright
DISCOVERING GOD by Rodney Stark
THE LOST HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY by Philip Jenkins
THE MISUNDERSTOOD JEW by Amy-Jill Levine
THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS OF JESUS by Marv Meyer
MORMON AMERICA by Richard Ostling
WHY RELIGION MATTERS by Huston Smith

Hurry! This offer is good in the United States only from November 4-13, 2011.

You’ll find more information and links to purchase here.

And, of course, we’re looking forward to seeing you at HarperOne’s SBL booth (536 & 537)—where you’ll find our new and classic print books at special prices throughout the conference.

Sincerely,

Laina Adler
Senior Director of Marketing
HarperOne

Catharsis – Taking my daughter to the libe

Jul 17th, 2011

by Christian Brady.

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Taken at Pattee/Paterno Library

After the US Women’s World Cup loss, what better catharsis than to descend into the stacks of the library with my daughter? I needed to pick up some more Ruth references and she is researching Romans and Greeks (and their conflicts, marriage, and death traditions). Feel free to suggest bibliography for her!

New Book: Disability and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant by Jeremy Schipper

Jul 16th, 2011

by Christian Brady.

1 comment

I am very pleased to announce a new book by friend and colleague Jeremy Schipper. Disability and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant is coming being published by OUP and is even reasonably priced! (Just $27.95.) I am sure I will be picking up a copy at SBL.

Description

Although disability imagery is ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible, characters with disabilities are not. The presence of the former does not guarantee the presence of the later. While interpreters explain away disabilities in specific characters, they celebrate the rhetorical contributions that disability imagery makes to the literary artistry of biblical prose and poetry, often as a trope to describe the suffering or struggles of a presumably nondisabled person or community. This situation contributes to the appearance (or illusion) of a Hebrew Bible that uses disability as a rich literary trope while disavowing the presence of figures or characters with disabilities.

Isaiah 53 provides a wonderful example of this dynamic at work. The “Suffering Servant” figure in Isaiah 53 has captured the imagination of readers since very early in the history of biblical interpretation. Most interpreters understand the servant as an otherwise able bodied person who suffers. By contrast, Jeremy Schipper’s study shows that Isaiah 53 describes the servant with language and imagery typically associated with disability in the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern literature. Informed by recent work in disability studies from across the humanities, it traces both the disappearance of the servant’s disability from the interpretative history of Isaiah 53 and the scholarly creation of the able bodied suffering servant.

Features

Launch of the brand new Biblical Refigurations series which offers fresh perspectives on the textual, cultural, and interpretative contexts of individual biblical characters

Highlights the relevance of disability studies to the study of the biblical text

Engages research in disability studies from across the humanities to illuminate a very familiar passage in biblical studies

Reviews the history of scholarship on Isaiah 53 and presents a close reading that challenges frequent assumptions associated with the suffering servant

Written in a clear and accesible style well suited to introducing and explaining cross disciplinary findings relevant to the study of the biblical text

Podcast: Mooseltoe, a Christmas children’s book

Dec 17th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

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I posted this the last few years and thought it worth sharing again. It is a fun story, even for those dads lacking in facial hair.

I share parts of a fun Christmas story for kids. Mooseltoe by Margie Palatini, Henry Cole (Illustrator). Oops! I just realized I said, “Welcome to a special podcast from Targuman.COM.” This is Targuman.org, of course. Merry Christmas!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)

Culture Making by Andy Crouch

Oct 14th, 2008

by Christian Brady.

2 comments

Cathleen Falsani, the “God Girl” of The Dude Abides, offers a review of a new book by Andy Crouch, Culture Making. Andy was, in addition to everything else about him that Falsani says below, was a classmate of mine (or I of his) at Cornell. I haven’t read the book yet (only so much time!) but I am eager to do so.

Andy Crouch, a savvy culture watcher and commentator who runs the Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today, has a pretty brilliant idea that’s rooted, in some ways, in Shelley’s idea of poet as unacknowledged legislator.

Speaking at the Catalyst Conference, a gathering of more than 12,000 young evangelical Christian leaders who run the gamut from very liberal to uber-conservative, outside Atlanta last weekend, Crouch urged the religiously minded among us to start thinking about culture making rather than culture battling.

It’s the theme of Crouch’s new book, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, where he traces the pattern of his community’s (i.e. evangelical Christian) engagement with culture (to use the term broadly) over the last 100 or so years.

Crouch, who for 10 years served as a campus minister at Harvard University, says Christians first engaged culture by critiquing it, sometimes viciously. Then they began copying culture, which explains the emergence of profoundly bad “Christian” pop music from the mid-’70s until the mid-’90s.

Of late, many religious folks, Crouch argues, have become blind consumers of culture. And none of these approaches — critiquing, copying or consuming — will do anything toward changing the culture for the better.

People of faith need to start earnestly cultivating culture. If you want to see something good, create it. Or support those who do.