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For both Thomas Aquinas and Joseph Albo, hope becomes a response to an outpouring of divine presence. This chapter considers the Jewish and Christian traditions from which Aquinas and Albo drew, and against which Benedict Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Friedrich Nietzsche fought, on their own merits. It looks first at hope in the Hebrew Scriptures and in rabbinic Judaism and then in the New Testament and in Saint Augustine. Jewish hope, articulated in the Torah, prophets, and writings, and refracted through the rabbinic literature, is a complex and variegated concept. Jewish hope and biblical hope have to do both with what is termed ‘conserving hope’ as well as with emancipatory hope. This chapter also analyses the shape of hope in early Christianity, the balance between conservation and emancipation, endurance and transformation, private and public, mundane and extra-mundane, and contrasts this with Jewish formulations. It concludes that despite the differences, the underlying structure — the structure of hope as a virtue — is the same for both traditions.

Chapter 6 offers a conclusion to the book as a whole. The chapter discusses three “clusters of meaning” associated consistently with the gospel message: the basic narrative of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; the claim that God has brought about salvation through the work of Jesus Christ; and the claim that this narrative is consistent with the work of God expressed in the Hebrew scriptures that Christians call the Old Testament. The chapter also shows how the material presented in the book helps resolve or clarify the four issues laid out in the book’s introduction.

This chapter contrasts two historical Greek varieties from the perspective of language contact, one ancient and one modern. The two varieties are complete opposites in almost every respect. The ancient one is the Septuagint (LXX), the collection of Jewish writings mainly translated from the Hebrew (and in some cases Aramaic) Scriptures, which also includes some original Greek pieces. The modern variety is the Cappadocian Greek dialect which used to be spoken in central Asia Minor until the population exchange between Greece and Turkey following the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Hebrew interference in the LXX is due to a translation technique, typical of religious translations, which is at once calqued and word-for-word to produce a mimetic text. As a result, interference is almost limited to lexical and syntactic extension.

This chapter discusses the traumatic crystallization of Hebrew scriptures. It reviews the motive of the Hasmoneans on supporting scriptural standardization and addresses the effect of communal trauma on scripture. It illustrates that the Jewish kings' preliminary development of standardized Hebrew scriptures was a precursor to the Christian Bible, Muslim Koran, and the Jewish Tanach.

This chapter explores the changes in human perception of the natural world that came about with the rise of modern science from the 16th century onwards, before narrowing its focus to the academic study of the Hebrew scriptures from the late 19th century onwards. It contrasts the marginalization of creation that emerged from early biblical scholars in this period with the alternative, more positive perspectives that began to emerge at the end of the 20th century, including contemporary theological responses to environmental issues such as the development of eco-theology and eco-feminism.

In one of his first publications, a 1988 essay on community organizing, Barack Obama praised the black church for maintaining “biblical traditions that call for liberation.” This book aims to locate black Exodus politics within the broader history of Protestant “deliverance politics.” Although Christians have read Exodus politically since Eusebius, Reformed Protestants proved especially keen on the Israelite paradigm. This chapter introduces the key biblical texts (including those related to the Year of Jubilee), and engages with two distinct bodies of scholarship inspired by Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution (1985) and the work of liberation theologians. It previews the book’s major themes, including providentialism, and highlights a number of major transitions in the Protestant reception of the Bible’s liberationist texts.

The first chapter examines reconciliation from a Christian perspective in order to establish the necessary theoretical framework for a topic that is studied from the intersection of various academic disciplines. This analysis identifies the central theological questions and arguments in the field of reconciliation, as well as the main assumptions that ground them. The chapter goes on to offer an initial approach to reconciliation from a distinct liberationist perspective. It explores the relationship between reconciliation and liberation, addresses the main criticisms leveled against liberation theology, and describes how this theological perspective can be used to structure a reconciling Christian praxis that meets the demands of truth, justice, and forgiveness.

This chapter traces the models of prophetic dream interpretation that were available to late antique Jewish, Byzantine Christian, and early Islamic writers from their own scriptural traditions. It offers a survey of those foundational scriptural traditions regarding the spiritual value and meaning of dreams and visions. First, it examines the Hebrew scriptures on prophetic dreams and their hierarchy of revelation. The ambiguity inherent in enigmatic dreams gave the chance of a starring role to two young men blessed with the divine gift of dream interpretation, Joseph and Daniel. Women had only a very limited place within the Hebrew prophetic tradition. Prophetic women were given a great chance to star in the New Testament writings, and especially in early apostolic tradition of Montanism. The chapter discusses how this third-century prophetic movement dealt with the question of extra-biblical prophecy through visions. The problem of discerning true from false prophets will be found to be a live issue for early Christian commentators such as Origen of Alexandria. Finally, the chapter contrasts the Judaeo-Christian scriptural tradition with the Qur’anic verses in which Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets, described his various revelations.

This chapter presents a broader explanation of what the prophetic traditions within both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament have to say about various justice issues. Since there is a multiplicity of voices present in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, quotes from both continue to be used to justify hegemony, militarism, racial, ethnic, and gender exclusion. For example, God's willingness to slaughter the Canaanites is still used to justify savagery and genocide against present-day so-called enemies. Prophetic texts have also been appropriated as tools for the maintenance of dominance. In addition to the widespread use of prophetic texts, religious justice activists consistently employ certain common methodologies in their work. These include the use of various popular education models to empower people with a critical consciousness, and the use of civil disobedience within tactical repertoires.

This chapter presents excerpts from The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, Considered in a Sermon on Mark VI.34 (1740), delivered by Gilbert Tennent, a revivalist during the Great Awakening. In his published sermon, Tennent compared unconverted ministers with the Pharisees of the Hebrew Scriptures who demanded rule keeping over piety. He also questioned the ministry of local clerics and proposed that the laity seek alternative spiritual guidance. In doing so, Tennent contributed to the growing tension between those who accepted and rejected the Great Awakening as the work of God.

This chapter reviews three biographical works on Jewish historians and historiography. These are “Shmuel Ettinger: Historian, teacher and public figure,” by Yaakov Barna, “Elias Bickerman as a Historian of the Jew,” by Albert I. Baumgarten and “Prophets of the Past: Interpreters of Jewish History,” by Michael Brenner. This chapter analyzes the impartiality and objectivity of the historians in their accounts of the Jewish experience and the presentation of men and events as part of universal history and not as a link between the Hebrew Scriptures and the rabbinic period.