Mark Smith
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Genesis Of Good And Evil
$30.00Add to cartFor centuries, the Garden of Eden story has been a cornerstone for the Christian doctrine of “the Fall” and “original sin.” In recent years, many scholars have disputed this understanding of Genesis 3 because it has no words for sin, transgression, disobedience, or punishment. Instead, it is about how the human condition came about. Yet the picture is not so simple. The Genesis of Good and Evil examines how the idea of “the Fall” developed in Jewish tradition on the eve of Christianity. In the end, the Garden of Eden is a rich study of humans in relation to God that leaves open many questions. One such question is, Does Genesis 3, 4, and 6, taken together, support the Christian doctrine of original sin? Smith’s well-informed, close reading of these chapters concludes that it does. In this book, he addresses the many mysterious matters of the Garden story and invites readers to explore questions of their own.
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Stories From Ancient Canaan (Expanded)
$35.00Add to cartThe texts from ancient Ugarit are among the most important modern discoveries for understanding the Bible. For more than thirty years, Stories from Ancient Canaan has been recognized as a highly authoritative and readable presentation of the principal Canaanite myths and epics discovered at Ugarit. This fully revised edition takes into account advances in the reading, understanding, and interpretation of these stories since 1978. It also includes two additional texts, expanded introductions, and illustrations. Coogan and Smith have collaborated to bring this classic up to date in order to provide accessible and accurate translations of these texts for a new generation of students.
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God In Translation
$43.99Add to cartGod in Translation offers a substantial, extraordinarily broad survey of ancient attitudes toward deities, from the Late Bronze Age through ancient Israel and into the New Testament.
Looking closely at relevant biblical texts and at their cultural contexts, Mark S. Smith demonstrates that the biblical attitude toward deities of other cultures is not uniformly negative, as is commonly supposed. He traces the historical development of Israel’s “one-god worldview,” linking it to the rise of the surrounding Mesopotamian empires. Smith’s study also produces evidence undermining a common modern assumption among historians of religion – that polytheism is tolerant while monotheism is prone to intolerance and violence.
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Priestly Vision Of Genesis 1
$29.00Add to cartFor many readers, Genesis 1-2 is simply the biblical account of creation. But ancient Israel could speak of creation in different ways, and the cultures of the ancient near east provided an even richer repertoire of creation myths. Mark S. Smith explores the nuances of what would become the premiere creation account in the Hebrew Bible and the serene priestly theology that informed it. That vision of an ordered cosmos, Smith argues, is evidence of the emergence of a mystical theology among priests in post-exilic Israel, and the placement of Genesis 1-2 at the beginning of Israel’s great epic is their sustained critique of the theology of divine conflict that saturated ancient near eastern creation myths. Smith’s treatment of Genesis 1 provides rich historical and theological insights into the biblical presentation of creation and the Creator.
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Memoirs Of God
$29.00Add to cartThis insightful work examines the variety of ways that collective memory, oral tradition, history, and history writing intersect. Integral to all this are the ways in which ancient Israel was shaped by the monarchy, the Babylonian exile, and the dispersions of Judeans and the ways in which Israel conceptualized and interacted with the divine–Yahweh as well as other deities.