The Violence of the Lamb

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0567467228
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (674 download)

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Book Synopsis The Violence of the Lamb by : Paul Middleton

Download or read book The Violence of the Lamb written by Paul Middleton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The act of martyrdom in the worldview of the Apocalypse has been considered to be an exemplification of non-violent resistance. Paul Middleton argues here, however, that it is in fact a representation of direct participation by Christians, through their martyrdom, in divine violence against those the author of Revelation portrays as God's enemies. Middleton shows that acceptance of martyrdom is to grasp the invitation to participate in the Revelation's divine violence. Martyrs follow the model laid down by the Lamb, who was not only slain, but resurrected, glorified, and who executes judgement. The world created by the Apocalypse encourages readers to conquer the Beast through martyrdom, but also through the experience of resurrection and being appointed judges. In this role, martyrs participate in the judgement of the wicked by sharing the Lamb's power to judge. Different from eschewing violence, the conceptual world of the Apocalypse portrays God, the Lamb, and the martyrs as possessing more power, might, and violent potential than the Emperor and his armies. Middleton believes that martyrdom and violence are necessary components of the worldview of Revelation.

Lamb Special Gift Ed

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Author :
Publisher : William Morrow
ISBN 13 : 9780061438592
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (385 download)

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Book Synopsis Lamb Special Gift Ed by : Christopher Moore

Download or read book Lamb Special Gift Ed written by Christopher Moore and published by William Morrow. This book was released on 2007-10-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have read—and reread—Christopher Moore's irreverent, iconoclastic, and divinely funny tale of the early life of Jesus Christ as witnessed by his boyhood pal Levi bar Alphaeus (a.k.a. Biff). Now, in this special (check out the cool red ribbon marker, gilt-edged pages, and gold lettering) gift edition of Christopher Moore's bestselling Lamb, you, too, can find out what really happened between the manger and the Sermon on the Mount. And, in a new afterword written expressly for this edition, Christopher Moore addresses some of the most frequently asked questions he's received from readers since Lamb's initial publication, about the book and himself. Fresh, funny, poignant, and wise, this special gift edition of Lamb is cause for rejoicing among readers everywhere.

Our Bodies, Their Battlefields

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Author :
Publisher : Scribner
ISBN 13 : 150119917X
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis Our Bodies, Their Battlefields by : Christina Lamb

Download or read book Our Bodies, Their Battlefields written by Christina Lamb and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Christina Lamb, the coauthor of the bestselling I Am Malala and an award-winning journalist—an essential, groundbreaking examination of how women experience war. In Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, longtime intrepid war correspondent Christina Lamb makes us witness to the lives of women in wartime. An award-winning war correspondent for twenty-five years (she’s never had a female editor) Lamb reports two wars—the “bang-bang” war and the story of how the people behind the lines live and survive. At the same time, since men usually act as the fighters, women are rarely interviewed about their experience of wartime, other than as grieving widows and mothers, though their experience is markedly different from that of the men involved in battle. Lamb chronicles extraordinary tragedy and challenges in the lives of women in wartime. And none is more devastating than the increase of the use of rape as a weapon of war. Visiting warzones including the Congo, Rwanda, Nigeria, Bosnia, and Iraq, and spending time with the Rohingya fleeing Myanmar, she records the harrowing stories of survivors, from Yazidi girls kept as sex slaves by ISIS fighters and the beekeeper risking his life to rescue them; to the thousands of schoolgirls abducted across northern Nigeria by Boko Haram, to the Congolese gynecologist who stitches up more rape victims than anyone on earth. Told as a journey, and structured by country, Our Bodies, Their Battlefields gives these women voice. We have made significant progress in international women’s rights, but across the world women are victimized by wartime atrocities that are rarely recorded, much less punished. The first ever prosecution for war rape was in 1997 and there have been remarkably few convictions since, as if rape doesn’t matter in the reckoning of war, only killing. Some courageous women in countries around the world are taking things in their own hands, hunting down the war criminals themselves, trying to trap them through Facebook. In this profoundly important book, Christina Lamb shines a light on some of the darkest parts of the human experience—so that we might find a new way forward. Our Bodies, Their Battlefields is as inspiring and empowering is as it is urgent, a clarion call for necessary change.

Caesar and the Lamb

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Author :
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1621894487
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (218 download)

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Book Synopsis Caesar and the Lamb by : George Kalantzis

Download or read book Caesar and the Lamb written by George Kalantzis and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the available patristic writings Caesar and the Lamb focuses on the attitudes of the earliest Christians on war and military service. Kalantzis not only provides the reader with many new translations of pre-Constantinian texts, he also tells the story of the struggle of the earliest Church, the communities of Christ at the margins of power and society, to bear witness to the nations that enveloped them as they transformed the dominant narratives of citizenship, loyalty, freedom, power, and control. Although Kalantzis examines writings on war and military service in the first three centuries of the Christian Church in an organized manner, the ways earliest Christians thought of themselves and the state are not presented here through the lens of antiquarian curiosity. With theological sensitivity and historical acumen this companion leads the reader into the world in which Christianity arose and asks questions of the past that help us understand the early character of the Christian faith with the hope that such an enterprise will also help us evaluate its expression in our own time.

Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108757308
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (87 download)

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Book Synopsis Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation by : Sarah Emanuel

Download or read book Humor, Resistance, and Jewish Cultural Persistence in the Book of Revelation written by Sarah Emanuel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empire-critical and postcolonial readings of Revelation are now commonplace, but scholars have not yet put these views into conversation with Jewish trauma and cultural survival strategies. In this book, Sarah Emanuel positions Revelation within its ancient Jewish context. Proposing a new reading of Revelation, she demonstrates how the text's author, a first century CE Jewish Christ-follower, used humor as a means of resisting Roman power. Emanuel uses multiple critical lenses, including humor, trauma, and postcolonial theory, together with historical-critical methods. These approaches enable a deeper understanding of the Jewishness of the early Christ-centered movement, and how Jews in antiquity related to their cultural and religious identity. Emanuel's volume offers new insights and fills a gap in contemporary scholarship on Revelation and biblical scholarship more broadly.

The Infinite Day

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Publisher : Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1414329350
Total Pages : 589 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (143 download)

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Book Synopsis The Infinite Day by : Chris Walley

Download or read book The Infinite Day written by Chris Walley and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-01-21 with total page 589 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Vero, you remember you once said there were people who would follow me to the gates of hell?” “A figure of speech.” “We’d better find them. That’s where we’re going.” After the defeat of the evil Dominion forces at Farholme, Commander Merral D’Avanos prepares a task force to rescue thirty hostages captured by the fleeing Margrave Lezaroth. Merral’s only hope is that he can get to the hostages before they’re taken to Lord-Emperor Nezhuala at the Blade of Night—the nexus of the Dominion’s power. But in order to get there, Merral and his crew will have to survive a perilous trip through Below Space. Meanwhile, news of the Dominion’s defeat at Farholme reaches Ancient Earth but is tempered by the sobering truth of the enemy’s growth and strength. It is now clear that an attack on the Assembly is imminent, but how far should the Assembly go to stop it? And does the real danger lie in the Dominion or in the subtle evil that has arrived at the heart of the Assembly itself? The Infinite Day is the thrilling conclusion to the epic Lamb among the Stars series that has readers and critics raving.

The Lamb Enters the Dreaming

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Author :
Publisher : Scribe Us
ISBN 13 : 9781947534803
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (348 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lamb Enters the Dreaming by : Robert Kenny

Download or read book The Lamb Enters the Dreaming written by Robert Kenny and published by Scribe Us. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lamb Enters the Dreaming traces the life of Nathanael Pepper of the Wotjobaluk people, who was born as the first pastoralists were driving cattle and sheep into Victoria's Wimmera region. In their wake came Christian missionaries, who were just as hostile to the settlers' violence as they were to the traditional beliefs of Aboriginal people. Nevertheless, Pepper converted to Christianity in 1860. The extraordinary story of Pepper's conversion, and his subsequent attempts to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable, reveals much about the deeper symbolic and moral forces at work in this collision of cultures.Robert Kenny challenges many orthodoxies in this profound reconsideration of how indigenous people and Europeans thought about each other. He traces Aboriginal attempts to accommodate the 'people of the sheep' and their pastoralist totem, Jesus, while arguing that it was European animals more than the settlers themselves that ruptured the Dreaming. On the European side, Kenny argues, increasingly powerful scientific and philosophical challenges undermined evangelical Christianity'sbelief that all humanity was of 'One Blood'. And behind it all lurked the spectre of slavery and the question of the moral order of imperialism.Brilliantly original in conception, and written with a rare lucidity and lightness of touch, The Lamb Enters the Dreaming is a detailed and sensitive exploration of a life, a meditation on the matter of culture and conversion, and a major reappraisal of the relations between Aboriginal and European societies in the first decades of contact in southern Australia.

The Trouble with Blame

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674910119
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The Trouble with Blame by : Sharon Lamb

Download or read book The Trouble with Blame written by Sharon Lamb and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work looks at the topic of victimisation and blame as a pathology for our time, and its consequences for personal responsibility.

Mad Mary Lamb

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Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 9780393057416
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (574 download)

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Book Synopsis Mad Mary Lamb by : Susan Tyler Hitchcock

Download or read book Mad Mary Lamb written by Susan Tyler Hitchcock and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2005 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After killing her mother with a carving knife, Mary Lamb spent the rest of her life in and out of madhouses; yet the crime and its aftermath opened up a new life. Freed to read extensively, she discovered her talent for writing and, with her brother, the essayist Charles Lamb, collaborated on the famous Tales from Shakespeare. This narrative of a nearly forgotten woman is a tapestry of insights into creativity and madness, the changing lives of women, and the redemptive power of the written word.

The Lamb's Supper

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Author :
Publisher : Image
ISBN 13 : 0385504802
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lamb's Supper by : Scott Hahn

Download or read book The Lamb's Supper written by Scott Hahn and published by Image. This book was released on 2002-06-18 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As seen on EWTN, bestselling author Scott Hahn unveils the mysteries of the Mass, offering readers a deeper appreciation of the most familiar of Catholic rituals. Of all things Catholic, there is nothing that is so familiar as the Mass. With its unchanging prayers, the Mass fits Catholics like their favorite clothes. Yet most Catholics sitting in the pews on Sundays fail to see the powerful supernatural drama that enfolds them. Pope John Paul II described the Mass as "Heaven on Earth," explaining that what "we celebrate on Earth is a mysterious participation in the heavenly liturgy." The Lamb’s Supper reveals a long-lost secret of the Church: The early Christians' key to understanding the mysteries of the Mass was the New Testament Book of Revelation. With its bizarre imagery, its mystic visions of heaven, and its end-of-time prophecies, Revelation mirrors the sacrifice and celebration of the Eucharist. Beautifully written, in clear direct language, bestselling Catholic author Scott Hahn's new book will help readers see the Mass with new eyes, pray the liturgy with a renewed heart, and enter into the Mass more fully, enthusiastically, intelligently, and powerfully than ever before.

The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore and Bar

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Author :
Publisher : NYLA
ISBN 13 : 1641971541
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore and Bar by : Seana Kelly

Download or read book The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore and Bar written by Seana Kelly and published by NYLA. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “master class in storytelling and survival.” —Publisher’s Weekly (starred review) Welcome to The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore and Bar. I’m Sam Quinn, the werewolf book nerd in charge. I run my business by one simple rule: Everyone needs a good book and a stiff drink, be they vampire, wicche, demon, or fae. No wolves, though. Ever. I have my reasons. I serve the supernatural community of San Francisco. We’ve been having some problems lately. Okay, I’m the one with the problems. The broken body of a female werewolf washed up on my doorstep. What makes sweat pool at the base of my spine, though, is realizing the scars she bears are identical to the ones I conceal. After hiding for years, I’ve been found. A protection I’ve been relying on is gone. While my wolf traits are strengthening steadily, the loss also left my mind vulnerable to attack. Someone is ensnaring me in horrifying visions intended to kill. Clive, the sexy vampire Master of the City, has figured out how to pull me out, designating himself my personal bodyguard. He’s grumpy about it, but that kiss is telling a different story. A change is taking place. It has to. The bookish bartender must become the fledgling badass. I’m a survivor. I’ll fight fang and claw to protect myself and the ones I love. And let’s face it, they have it coming. *** The reviews are in: "Kelly (Welcome Home, Katie Gallagher) introduces fierce, lovable heroine Sam Quinn with this master class in storytelling and survival. Seven years ago, Sam was attacked, raped, and forcibly turned into a werewolf, putting an end to her life as she knew it. She’s since made a home for herself in San Francisco, opening a combination bookstore/bar catering exclusively to the supernatural community. A loner by nature and still contending with her trauma, she’s content to lie low without a wolf pack of her own. But when dead bodies begin piling up across the city and Sam receives a threat from an unknown source, she finds herself surrounded by a phalanx of friends she never realized she had. Among them is Clive, the leader of the city’s vampire community, whose good looks attract Sam “like a zombie to brains.” Kelly pulls off an impressive feat, weaving the sensitively handled story of Sam’s emotional recovery through a rollicking adventure. The unique setting and endearingly quirky side characters only add to the charm. Readers will delight in both the humor and the heartache of this powerful urban fantasy, and they’ll be eager to see where Sam goes next.” (Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)) "This action-packed paranormal series launch will appeal to readers who enjoy a plot-driven, female-centric journey of growth with a side of romance. Great for fans of Patricia Briggs’s Alpha and Omega series.” (Book Life (Editor’s pick))

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion

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Author :
Publisher : Tor.com
ISBN 13 : 0765397358
Total Pages : 112 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (653 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by : Margaret Killjoy

Download or read book The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion written by Margaret Killjoy and published by Tor.com. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy pits utopian anarchists against rogue demon deer in this dropkick-in-the-mouth punk fantasy that Alan Moore calls "scary and energetic." Searching for clues about her best friend’s mysterious suicide, Danielle ventures to the squatter, utopian town of Freedom, Iowa, and witnesses a protector spirit — in the form of a blood-red, three-antlered deer — begin to turn on its summoners. She and her new friends have to act fast if they’re going to save the town — or get out alive. “Intelligent and fiercely imagined.” —Alan Moore “A dark story of the human need for power.” —Eileen Gunn “Daring anti-fantasy.”— Nick Mamatas “A unique bite of punk culture.” — Delilah S. Dawson “Important, thought-provoking...thrilling ride.” —Lewis Shiner “Always vivid.”—Tobias Buckell “As relatable as it is harrowing.” —Leanna Renee Hieber “Utterly engrossing...it refuses to let you go.” —Mur Lafferty At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Lamb to the Slaughter (A Roald Dahl Short Story)

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 1405911034
Total Pages : 19 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (59 download)

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Book Synopsis Lamb to the Slaughter (A Roald Dahl Short Story) by : Roald Dahl

Download or read book Lamb to the Slaughter (A Roald Dahl Short Story) written by Roald Dahl and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-09-13 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lamb to the Slaughter is a short, sharp, chilling story from Roald Dahl, the master of the shocking tale. In Lamb to the Slaughter, Roald Dahl, one of the world's favourite authors, tells a twisted story about the darker side of human nature. Here, a wife serves up a dish that utterly baffles the police . . . Lamb to the Slaughter is taken from the short story collection Someone Like You, which includes seventeen other devious and shocking stories, featuring the two men who make an unusual and chilling wager over the provenance of a bottle of wine; a curious machine that reveals the horrifying truth about plants; the man waiting to be bitten by the venomous snake asleep on his stomach; and others. 'The absolute master of the twist in the tale.' (Observer ) This story is also available as a Penguin digital audio download read by Juliet Stevenson. Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.

A Slaughtered Lamb

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Author :
Publisher : ACU Press/Leafwood Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9780891124245
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (242 download)

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Book Synopsis A Slaughtered Lamb by : Gregory Stevenson

Download or read book A Slaughtered Lamb written by Gregory Stevenson and published by ACU Press/Leafwood Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the literary and theological message of Revelation using the topics of evil and suffering as a conceptual organizer, which provides readers an immediate connection between this ancient text and their lives.

Jesus' Literacy

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Author :
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 0567119726
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (671 download)

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Book Synopsis Jesus' Literacy by : Chris Keith

Download or read book Jesus' Literacy written by Chris Keith and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introductory textbook approaches the study of intercultural communication from the field of international studies, focusing on issues of power, conflict, cooperation, and diplomacy.

Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric?

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Author :
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
ISBN 13 : 0830870733
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (38 download)

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Book Synopsis Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? by : William J. Webb

Download or read book Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? written by William J. Webb and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Word Guild Award Shortlist — Biblical Studies Word Guild Best Book Cover Award Association of University Presses Design Show — Book, Jacket, and Covers Christians cannot ignore the intersection of religion and violence, whether contemporary or ancient. In our own Scriptures, war texts that appear to approve of genocidal killings and war rape—forcibly taking female captives for wives—raise hard questions about biblical ethics and the character of God. Have we missed something in our traditional readings? In Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? William Webb and Gordon Oeste address the ethics of reading biblical war texts today. Theirs is a biblical-theological reading with an eye to hermeneutical, ethical, canonical, and ancient cultural contexts. Identifying a spectrum of views on war texts ranging from "no ethical problems" to "utterly repulsive," the authors pursue a middle path using a hermeneutic of incremental, redemptive-movement ethics. Instead of trying to force traditional Christian answers to fit contemporary questions, they argue, we must properly connect the traditional answers with the biblical storyline questions that were on the minds of Scripture's original readers. And there are indeed better answers to the ethical problems in the war texts. Woven throughout the Old Testament, a collection of antiwar and subversive war texts suggest that Yahweh's involvement in Israel's warfare required some degree of accommodation to people living in a fallen world. Yet, God's redemptive influence even within the ugliness of ancient warfare shouts loudly about a future hope—a final battle fought with complete and untainted justice by Christ.

I Know This Much Is True

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780060391621
Total Pages : 884 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis I Know This Much Is True by : Wally Lamb

Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.