Is "green" just another liberal ideology? God is the Creator of all and cares deeply for all that he has made. His vision for creation is seen through a world teeming with life where eternity is breathed into and through all creation. Jesus teaches that humans must live with a spirit of generosity and restraint; however, a spirit of meanness and greed dominates human culture and leaves nearly 1.3 billion people living on less than $1 a day. The politics of globalization based on principles of greed have resulted in the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, and a shortage of food and clean water. Jesus teaches that those who are generous are blessed, and such generosity brings justice to all creation. There cannot be God’s social justice without ecological sanity, and yet we tend to speak of social justice as though non-human creation doesn’t matter. God cares even for the flowers of the field, yet we show contempt for God in our careless plunder of his creation. To love God is to love all that he has made, from our own families to the soil outside our homes.

This is a collection of twenty-four essays by Richard Bauckham first published between 1976 and 2008, some of which have been updated for this volume. Many aspects of the literature and thought of early Judaism are covered, including life after death, the provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, the Jewish apocalypses, the book of Tobit, the Horarium of Adam, and the Contra Apionem of Josephus. There are discussions of 'the parting of the ways' between early Judaism and early Christianity and of the relevance of early Jewish literature for the study of the New Testament. Other essays throw light on specific aspects or texts of early Christianity by relating them to their early Jewish context. These include studies of the delay of the parousia, the restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts, and the use of Latin names by Paul and other Jews in the early Christian movement. The essays in this volume result from the author's conviction, throughout his career, that the New Testament texts can only be understood adequately through wide-ranging and detailed study of the Judaism of the late Second Temple period.

Product Description: Essays on scripture, tradition and reason; at the heart of every major issue confronting the life and thought of all the Christian Churches today, in honour of R. P. C. Hanson