Samuel E. Balentine's Books

Prayer in the Hebrew Bible

The Drama of Divine-Human Dialogue

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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Prayer in the Hebrew Bible

The Drama of Divine-Human Dialogue

By: Samuel E. Balentine

Balentine invites the reader to consider several aspects of prayer in the Hebrew Bible: prayer and the depiction of character, prayer and the characterization of God, prayers for divine justice, the lament tradition, sensible praise, prayer in Old Testament theology, and the motif of the church as "a house of prayer".

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336

Publisher

Fortress Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1451418078

ISBN 13

9781451418071

The Lure of Transcendence and the Audacity of Prayer

Selected Essays

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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The Lure of Transcendence and the Audacity of Prayer

Selected Essays

By: Samuel E. Balentine

The discourse of prayer responds to the abiding lure of transcendence. From Gilgamesh to the primordial human beings in Eden to Odysseus, the quest for ultimate truths has summoned forth all manner of human effort - courageous, desperate, pious, impious, successful, failed, invited, forbidden - and like all such lures, one can never be certain whether the glimmer of transcendence is that of a bright and shining star that illuminates the shadows or only a shiny object that seduces one into an inescapable darkness (a fishing lure, for example). In this study, Samuel E. Balentine demonstrates how prayer's invocation of God transgresses the limits of human beings. The author shows how inviting, let alone commanding God to speak may be the "acme of bardic pretention," but in the ancient world such transgression characterizes the audacity of prayer.

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Page Count

302

Publisher

Mohr Siebeck

Published Date

ISBN 10

3161611039

ISBN 13

9783161611032

Leviticus

Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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Leviticus

Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

By: Samuel E. Balentine

This volume in the popular Interpretation series presents the book of Leviticus. It focuses on the history of Israel during this time when Israel's life was marked by the various ritual sacrifices and observances commanded by God for the ordering of the nation's life. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching is a distinctive resource for those who interpret the Bible in the church. Planned and written specifically for teaching and preaching needs, this critically acclaimed biblical commentary is a major contribution to scholarship and ministry.

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Page Count

250

Publisher

Westminster John Knox Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1611649315

ISBN 13

9781611649314

Wisdom Literature

By: Prof. Samuel E. Balentine

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Wisdom Literature

By: Prof. Samuel E. Balentine

If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom formed in the life of faith, its end is nothing less than the shaping of a moral self and community attuned to the character of God. This pursuit of wisdom is an ongoing journey, never a simple arrival. For the wisdom writings of the Old Testament, the pursuit of wisdom calls for the ongoing attainment of instruction, insight, shrewdness, knowledge, prudence, learning, and skill. And persons who attain wisdom think more deeply, are more discerning, and have a keener insight into the complexities and nuances of decision making. For a world-perspective that assumes the power and reality of divinity, being wise means living ethically - and to live ethically, one must be in a constant intellectual pursuit of meaning. The book details the structure, themes, and contribution to both ancient and modern society of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. The chapters on Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon will discuss the consonance and dissonance with “canonical wisdom,” giving special attention to the development of their core ideas. The book will conclude with a chapter on Wisdom’s abiding legacy.

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Page Count

230

Publisher

Abingdon Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1426765363

ISBN 13

9781426765360

The Torah's Vision of Worship

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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The Torah's Vision of Worship

By: Samuel E. Balentine

A complement to the author's earlier Overtures to Biblical Theology study on prayer, this volume addresses the topic of worship as articulated in the first five books of the Bible. Rather than a history of Israelite religion, Balentine's volume examines the "vision" of worship expounded in the Torah in relation to priesthood, creation, liturgy, and covenant. He concludes by discussing the contemporary situation of experiencing God's hiddenness and a world caught in despair. Balentine proposes that a fresh look at the Torah offers possibilities of counter-imagination and hope.

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288

Publisher

Fortress Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1451418086

ISBN 13

9781451418088

Have You Considered My Servant Job?

Understanding the Biblical Archetype of Patience

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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Have You Considered My Servant Job?

Understanding the Biblical Archetype of Patience

By: Samuel E. Balentine

An extensive history of how the Bible’s story of Job has been interpreted through the ages. The question that launches Job’s story is posed by God at the outset of the story: “Have you considered my servant Job?” (1:8; 2:3). By any estimation the answer to this question must be yes. The forty-two chapters that form the biblical story have in fact opened the story to an ongoing practice of reading and rereading, evaluating and reevaluating. Early Greek and Jewish translators emphasized some aspects of the story and omitted others; the Church Fathers interpreted Job as a forerunner of Christ, while medieval Jewish commentators debated conservative and liberal interpretations of God’s providential love. Artists, beginning at least in the Greco-Roman period, painted and sculpted their own interpretations of Job. Novelists, playwrights, poets, and musicians—religious and irreligious, from virtually all points of the globe—have added their own distinctive readings. In Have You Considered My Servant Job?, Samuel E. Balentine examines this rich and varied history of interpretation by focusing on the principal characters in the story—Job, God, the satan figure, Job’s wife, and Job’s friends. Each chapter begins with a concise analysis of the biblical description of these characters, then explores how subsequent readers have expanded or reduced the story, shifted its major emphases or retained them, read the story as history or as fiction, and applied the morals of the story to the present or dismissed them as irrelevant. Each new generation of readers is shaped by different historical, cultural, and political contexts, which in turn require new interpretations of an old yet continually mesmerizing story. Voltaire read Job one way in the eighteenth century, Herman Melville a different way in the nineteenth century. Goethe’s reading of the satan figure in Faust is not the same as Chaucer’s in The Canterbury Tales, and neither is fully consonant with the Testament of Job or the Qur’an. One need only compare the descriptions of God in the biblical account with the imaginative renderings by Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Franz Kafka to see that the effort to understand why God afflicts Job “for no reason” (2:3) continues to be both compelling and endlessly complicated. “A tour de force of cultural interaction with the book of Job. He guides today’s reader along the path of Job interpretation, exegesis, adaptation and imagining revealing the sheer variety of themes, meanings, creativity and re-readings that have been inspired by this one biblical book. Balentine shows us that not only is there “always someone playing Job” (MacLeish, J.B.) but there’s always someone, past or present, reading this ever-enigmatic book.” —Katharine J. Dell, University of Cambridge “Balentine “considers Job” for the countless ways this biblical book, in all its rich complexities, has inspired readers over the centuries. . . . Balentine’s volume sparkles with insightful theological commentary and rigorous scholarship, and any exegetical course or study on Job would benefit from it.” —Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

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292

Publisher

Univ of South Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

161117452X

ISBN 13

9781611174526

Wisdom Literature

By: Prof. Samuel E. Balentine

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Wisdom Literature

By: Prof. Samuel E. Balentine

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230

Publisher

Abingdon Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1426765363

ISBN 13

9781426765360

Have You Considered My Servant Job?

Understanding the Biblical Archetype of Patience

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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Have You Considered My Servant Job?

Understanding the Biblical Archetype of Patience

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

292

Publisher

Univ of South Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

161117452X

ISBN 13

9781611174526

Prayer in the Hebrew Bible

The Drama of Divine-Human Dialogue

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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Prayer in the Hebrew Bible

The Drama of Divine-Human Dialogue

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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Page Count

336

Publisher

Fortress Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1451418078

ISBN 13

9781451418071

Leviticus

Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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Leviticus

Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

By: Samuel E. Balentine

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

250

Publisher

Westminster John Knox Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1611649315

ISBN 13

9781611649314

Book's by Samuel E. Balentine

Prayer in the Hebrew Bible

Prayer in the Hebrew Bible

The Lure of Transcendence and the Audacity of Prayer

The Lure of Transcendence and the Audacity of Prayer

Leviticus

Leviticus

Wisdom Literature

Wisdom Literature

The Torah's Vision of Worship

The Torah's Vision of Worship

Have You Considered My Servant Job?

Have You Considered My Servant Job?

Wisdom Literature

Wisdom Literature

Have You Considered My Servant Job?

Have You Considered My Servant Job?

Prayer in the Hebrew Bible

Prayer in the Hebrew Bible

Leviticus

Leviticus

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