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This new edition has been considerably expanded to take in work on the legal and didactic material published since the 1980s. It gives more attention to the different literary genres used by Israel's sages, and to the social settings in which the material came into existence and circulated. References to relevant archaeological data have also been brought up to date. The main purpose of the book, however, remains the same – to trace the course of two related key streams of tradition, law, and wisdom throughout the history of Israel in the biblical period, and to demonstrate their essential lines of continuity with classical Jewish thought and early Christian theology.

This study explores Augustine’s developing understanding of contemplation, beginning with his earliest accounts written before his baptism and ending with the Confessions. Chapter One examines the pagan monotheism of the Roman Platonists and the role of contemplation in their theology. Augustine’s pre-baptismal writings are then examined in Chapter Two, tracking his fundamental break from pagan Platonism. Chapter Three then turns to Augustine’s developing understanding of contemplation in these pre-baptismal texts. Chapter Four concentrates on Augustine’s thought during the decade after his baptism in 387, a period that encompasses his monastic life in Thagaste, and his years first as a presbyter and then as a bishop in Hippo Regius. This chapter follows the arc of Augustine’s thought through these years of transition and leads into the Confessions, giving a vantage point to survey its theology of contemplation. Chapter Five concentrates on the Confessions and sets its most famous account of contemplation, the vision at Ostia from Book IX, into a larger polemical context. The book concludes with observations on the importance of Augustine’s theology of contemplation to the emergence of classical Christianity in late antiquity.

This book offers an interpretation of Nietzsche’s engagement with the work of Paul the Apostle, reorienting the relationship between the two thinkers while embedding modern philosophy within early Christian theology. Paying careful attention to Nietzsche’s dialectics, the text situates the philosopher’s thought within the history of Christianity, specifically the Pauline dialectics of law and faith, and reveals how atheism is constructed in relation to Christianity. Countering Heidegger’s characterization of Nietzsche as an anti-Platonist, the book brings the philosopher closer to Paul through a radical rereading of his entire corpus against Christianity. This approach builds a compelling new history of the West resting on a logic of sublimation, from ancient Greece and early Judaism to the death of God. This book discovers in Nietzsche’s philosophy a solid, tangible Pauline structure and virtual, fragile Greek content, positioning the thinker as a forerunner of the recent “return to Paul” led by Badiou, Agamben, Žižek, and Breton. By changing the focus of modern philosophical inquiry from “Nietzsche and philosophy” to “Nietzsche and Christianity,” the book initiates a major challenge to the primacy of Plato in the history of Western philosophy and narrow certainties regarding Nietzsche’s relationship to Christian thought.

The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine's most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. This book is the fourth work in this tetralogy. Augustine coined the term “soliloquy” to describe this new form of dialogue. The book, a conversation between Augustine and his reason, fuses the dialogue genre and Roman theater, opening with a search for intellectual and moral self-knowledge before converging on the nature of truth and the question of the soul's immortality. The volume also includes On the Immortality of the Soul, which consists of notes for the unfinished portion of the work.

The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity are dialogues that have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the “Cassiciacum dialogues,” these four works are of a high literary and intellectual quality, combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine's most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. This book is the third work in this tetralogy, and it is Augustine's only work explicitly devoted to theodicy, the reconciliation of Almighty God's goodness with evil's existence. In this dialogue, Augustine argues that a certain kind of self-knowledge is the key to unlocking the answers to theodicy's vexing questions, and he devotes the latter half of the dialogue to an excursus on the liberal arts as disciplines that will help strengthen the mind to know itself and God.