Bøger af David L. Balch

""This volume is an excellent colloquy of scripture scholars who are concerned enough about the church to engage each other in a real dialogue about a very explosive topic. The various contributors approach the same Bible from different hermeneutical stances but do so with respect for their colleagues in the debate. No position on the issue comes off unscathed. There is something here to make everybody mad, no matter their stance. But there is also plenty in this book to inform all readers about what 'those others' really think."" --James A. Sanders Claremont Graduate School""This sterling set of essays offers many fresh insights, and it will certainly take its place among the very best of the recent volumes devoted to exploring how the church should view homosexuality. While the authors' varying approaches and viewpoints demonstrate how intractable many of the issues remain, the book as a whole shows how much can be gained from the kind of informed and respectful dialogue that lies behind it--a dialogue to which this book in turn can significantly contribute."" --Victor Paul Furnish Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University""David Balch is to be congratulated for bringing together ten essays that elucidate the pros and cons of current Christian discussion on the questions of homosexuality. These well-reasoned and highly competent essays by major figures on both sides of the issue are not likely to solve the debate, let alone make it go away, but they will challenge partisans on both sides to rethink their positions once more. They also provide a stirring model of how the church can disagree with itself publicly and responsibly, passionately and respectfully."" -- Ralph W. Klein Lutheran School of Theology at ChicagoDavid L. Balch is Professor of New Testament at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. He is the author of Roman Domestic Art and Early House Churches (2007)

Ethnic values changed as Imperial Rome expanded, challenging ethnocentric values in Rome itself, as well as in Greece and Judea. Rhetorically, Roman, Greek, and Judean writers who eulogized their cities all claimed they would receive foreigners. Further, Greco-Roman narratives of urban tensions between rich and poor, proud and humble, promoted reconciliation and fellowship between social classes. Luke wrote Acts in this ethnic, economic, political context, narrating Jesus as a founder who changed laws to encourage receiving foreigners, which promoted civic, missionary growth and legitimated interests of the poor and humble. David L. Balch relates Roman art to early Christianity and introduces famous, pre-Roman Corinthian artists. He shows women visually represented as priests, compares Dionysian and Corinthian charismatic speech and argues that larger assemblies of the earliest, Pauline believers "sat" (1 Cor 14.30) in taverns. Also, the author demonstrates that the image of a pregnant woman in Revelation 12 subverts imperial claims to the divine origin of the emperor, before finally suggesting that visual representations by Roman domestic artists of "a category of women who upset expected forms of conduct" (Bergmann) encouraged early Christian women like Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas to move beyond gender stereotypes of being victims. Balch concludes with two book reviews, one of Nicolas Wiater's book on the Greek biographer and historian Dionysius, who was a model for both Josephus and Luke-Acts, the second of a book by Frederick Brenk on Hellenistic philosophy and mystery religion in relation to earliest Christianity.

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