Davids Secret Demons Print On Demand Title
$43.99
A Print on Demand Title
The Bible portrays King David as an exceptional man and a paragon of godly devotion. But was he? Some scholars deny that he existed at all. Did he? This challenging book examines the written and archaeological evidence critically in an effort to paint an accurate picture of one of the Bible’s central figures.
Neither defending nor rejecting the traditions about David, Baruch Halpern, a leading scholar of biblical history and the ancient Near East, traces the origins of development of David’s persona. Because the biblical text clearly responds to concerns that can only be contemporary with David himself, we can believe that David was both real and a central actor in the historical drama of ancient Israel. Yet at the same time, the written record also shows that contemporaries understood David’s character to be much more unsavory trhan the tradition has hitherto allowed.
Halpern digs beneath the layers of tradition to understand David as an individual, as a person. The man he uncovers turns out to have been complex, ambiguous, and – above all – surprising. According to Halpern, the image of David grew over time. He was the founder of the dynasty that perpetuated the texts about him, and they progressively exaggerated his accomplishments. But in the earliest writings David remains a modest figure, as this book shows for the first time. To understand David as a human being, one must keep in mind that he was primarily a politicians who operated in a rough-and-tumble environment in which competitors were ready literally to slit throats.
Halpern’s work raises many provocative questions: Was David an Israelite or a Philistine? Was Solomon really David’s son? Did David take the throne of Israel by the consent or against the will of the people? How many murders did he commit on his way to the crown? Indeed, was David someone it would have been wise to even invite to dinner?
The challenging arguments in David’s Secret Demons are sure to provoke all kinds of discussion among biblical scholars and general readers alike. In addition – a big bonus – Halpern’s accessible, at times humorous prose will itself draw readers everywhere into the compelling story of David found between these covers.
in stock within 3-5 days of online purchase
SKU (ISBN): 9780802827975
ISBN10: 0802827977
Baruch Halpern
Binding: Trade Paper
Published: March 2004
Bible In Its World
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Print On Demand Product
Related products
-
Devil At My Heels
$14.99Add to cartAthletically gifted, Louis Zamperini propelled himself from the tough streets of Southern California to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and to an NCAA mile record at USC that stood for 20 years. When war came he left the track for a B-24-a move that would have heartbreaking consequences. On a routine mission his plane crashed into the shark-infested Pacific and he would drift 2,000 miles for 47 days before being found by the Japanese. As a prisoner of war, Zamperini endured two years of horrible torture and humiliation at the hands of a psychopathic guard nicknamed “The Bird.” Yet Zamperini endured and returned home a hero.
Unfortunately, the terrible memory of his experiences haunted him. Zamperini turned to alcohol and spiraled into the depths of despair until a young preacher named Billy Graham helped him rediscover the faith that would eventually lead him to return to Japan and personally forgive all his now-imprisoned captors. Moving and unforgettable, terrifying and inspirational, Devil At My Heels is not to be missed.
-
Ruthless Trust : The Ragamuffins Path To God
$14.99Add to cartWe are made for the love of God, and nothing less will ever satisfy us. In his acclaimed bestseller, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning showed us the powerful truth that the divine gifts of love is ever present for us regardless of the state of our lives. Now in this challenging sequel, he turns to our primary obstacle to living fully within this divine love — the lack of “ruthless trust.”
Through rich stories and deep insights, Manning shows us how true and radical trust can transform everything in our lives. No matter where we are on our path of discipleship, he offers encouragement to shed the limitations of fear, shame, and doubt through complete reliance upon God. The way of Ruthless Trust is not an abstract theory; it is that very practical and demanding path that each of us must follow in response to God’s love.
-
Great By Choice
$29.99Add to cartThe new question
Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns with another groundbreaking work, this time to ask: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research, buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins and his colleague, Morten Hansen, enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times.The new study
Great by Choice distinguishes itself from Collins’s prior work by its focus not just on performance, but also on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today.With a team of more than twenty researchers, Collins and Hansen studied companies that rose to greatness-beating their industry indexes by a minimum of ten times over fifteen years-in environments characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control. The research team then contrasted these “10X companies” to a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to achieve greatness in similarly extreme environments.
The new findings
The study results were full of provocative surprises. Such as:The best leaders were not more risk taking, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons; they were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid.
Innovation by itself turns out not to be the trump card in a chaotic and uncertain world; more important is the ability to scale innovation, to blend creativity with discipline.
Following the belief that leading in a “fast world” always requires “fast decisions” and “fast action” is a good way to get killed.
The great companies changed less in reaction to a radically changing world than the comparison companies.
The authors challenge conventional wisdom with thought-provoking, sticky, and supremely practical concepts. They include: 10Xers; the 20 Mile March; Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs; Leading above the Death Line; Zoom Out, Then Zoom In; and the SMaC Recipe.Finally, in the last chapter, Collins and Hansen present their most provocative and original analysis: defining, quantifying, and studying the role of luck. The great companies and the leaders who built them were not luckier than the comparisons, but they did get a higher Return on Luck.
This book is classic Collins: contrarian, data-driven, and uplifting. He and Hansen show convincingly that, even in a chaotic and uncer
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.