John R. Levison

The Spirit in First Century Judaism lays a cornerstone in the foundation of pneumatological studies by scouring ancient writings like Plato and Plutarch, Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as those of Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

The Spirit in First-Century Judaism

Archie T. Wright

Ronald Herms

The Spirit Says offers a stunning collection of articles by an influential assemblage of scholars, all of whom lend considerable insight to the relationship between inspiration and interpretation. They address this otherwise intractable question with deft and occasionally daring readings of a variety of texts from the ancient world, including—but not limited to—the scriptures of early Judaism and Christianity. The thrust of this book can be summed up not so much in one question as in four: o What is the role of revelation in the interpretation of Scripture? o What might it look like for an author to be inspired? o What motivates a claim to the inspired interpretation of Scripture? o Who is inspired to interpret Scripture? More often than not, these questions are submerged in this volume under the tame rubrics of exegesis and hermeneutics, but they rise in swells and surges too to the surface, not just occasionally but often. Combining an assortment of prominent voices, this book does not merely offer signposts along the way. It charts a pioneering path toward a model of interpretation that is at once intellectually robust and unmistakably inspired.

Inspiration and Interpretation in Israelite, Jewish, and Early Christian Texts

The Spirit Says

For the first time, Jack Levison offers the English-speaking world a comprehensive commentary on the Greek Life of Adam and Eve, an epic of pain, death, and hope. An exhaustive introduction clarifies issues of literary character, manuscripts and versions, and provenance; the commentary itself provides rich discussions of the Greek text, illuminated by Jewish scripture and ancient Greek and Hebrew literature. Fresh translation and bibliography.

The Greek Life of Adam and Eve

How does the spirit work through prophets? Early Jewish writers were themselves of two minds on this question. Levison shows that not only are both of these concepts biblically based, they are but two expressions of a biblical concept of a spirit which is unbounded by nature or geography and which has no limits on the way it can work.

Ecstasy and Inspired Interpretation in the New Testament World

Of Two Minds

Louis H. Feldman

This volume offers a state-of-the-art collection of papers by leading scholars on Josephus' "Contra Apionem," together with a concordance to the Latin section, 2.52-113.

Josephus' Contra Apionem

The Holy Spirit has long been considered the exclusive possession of Christianity. The Church's trinitarian creeds exert a great influence, carefully and precisely defining the Holy Spirit in specifically Christian terms. But history isn't always so tidy. In The Holy Spirit before Christianity, John R. Levison leads readers back five hundred years before Jesus Christ and the church, back to the period of Israel's sojourn in Babylonian exile and their return to the land of promise. Levison argues that this crucial juncture in Israelite history witnessed unprecedented theological development that did not merely set the stage but even anticipated later Christian expressions of the Spirit. The prophet Haggai and the author of Isaiah 56-66, in their search for ways to grapple with the tragic events of exile and to articulate hope for the future, took up old exodus traditions of divine agents--pillars of fire, an angel, God's own presence--and fused them together under the language of God's Spirit. Since it was the Spirit of God who led Israel up from Egypt and formed them into a holy nation, now, the prophets assured, the Spirit of God would lead and renew those returning from exile. The revolutionary notion of God's Spirit, as expressed in Haggai and Isaiah, originated a full millennium before the era of the church councils that defined the Spirit's personhood and role in Christian faith. The insights of this book demand a full investigation--and reformation--of the origin and shape of our understanding of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit Before Christianity

Containing meticulous, up-to-date scholarship yet written in a flowing, enjoyable style, this comprehensive book takes readers on a journey through a breathtaking array of literary texts, encompassing the literature of Israel, early Judaism, the Greco-Roman world, and the New Testament. John R. Levison's skill with ancient texts -- already demonstrated in his acclaimed The Spirit in First-Century Judaism -- is here extended to a myriad of other expressions of the Spirit in antiquity.

Filled with the Spirit

Priscilla Pope-Levison

Should women be priests? Should women submit to their husbands? Is premarital sex okay? Inflammatory questions such as these have splintered Christianity and polarized the church. In Sex, Gender, and Christianity, a cadre of seasoned college professors offers the modest proposal that honest, fruitful conversations about these questions will take place only if we develop the ability to deal with sex, gender, and the Christian faith with the academic rigor and perspectives of our various disciplines. This volume contributes an unprecedented collection of first-rate articles from a variety of disciplines--from the social sciences to history, from literary criticism to theology--that will challenge college administrators, professors, and students to address fractious questions in an atmosphere of scholarly inquiry.

Sex, Gender, and Christianity

In Return to Babel, each of ten historically significant biblical texts is interpreted by three scholars: one Latin American, one African, and one Asian. Geographic locales range from a tiny village in the Philippines to the city of Nairobi, Kenya; from Gwangju, South Korea, with its one million inhabitants, to the frontier city of Wiwili in the northern mountains of Nicaragua. The result is a collection of essays that shed new light on familiar texts and make the reader aware of the ways in which culture can shape our understanding of Scripture.

John R. Levison

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