An Apocryphal God: Beyond Divine Maturity - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451470355 ISBN 13: 9781451470352

Publisher: Fortress Press, 2015

Synopsis

In Portraits of a Mature God, Mark McEntire traced the narrative development of the divine character in the Old Testament, placing the God portrayed at the end of that long story at the center of theological discussion. He showed that Israel's understanding of God had developed into a complex, multipurpose being who could work within a new reality, a world that included a semiautonomous province of Yehud and a burgeoning Mesopotamian-Mediterranean world in which the Jewish people lived and moved in a growing diversity of ways. Now, McEntire continues that story beyond the narrative end of the Hebrew Bible as Israel and Israel's God moved into the Hellenistic world. The "narrative" McEntire perceives in the apocryphal literature describes a God protecting and guiding the scattered and persecuted, a God responding to suffering in revolt, and a God disclosing mysteries, yet also hidden in the symbolism of dreams and visions. McEntire here provides a coherent and compelling account of theological perspectives in the apocryphal writings and beyond.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark McEntire is professor of biblical studies at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. He has authored widely used textbooks The Old Testament Story, Ninth Edition (2012), and Struggling with God: An Introduction to the Pentateuch (2008); scholarly works, Dangerous Worlds: Living and Dying in Biblical Texts (2004) and The Blood of Abel: The Violent Plot in the Hebrew Bible (1999); and, with Joel Emerson, Raising Cain, Fleeing Egypt, and Fighting Philistines: The Old Testament in Popular Music (2006). This work follows his successful Portraits of a Mature God: Choices in Old Testament Theology (Fortress Press, 2013).

About this edition

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1451470355
• ISBN 13: 9781451470352
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296
• Editor: McEntire Mark