Steve Sherwood

Revised Printing Now Available! The Bible has been the most discussed and scrutinized text in human history. Here we are, still obsessed with itThe Bible: Ancient Context and Ongoing Community serves as a guide to anyone hoping to understand the Bible's ancient context and its role for ongoing communities of readers. The publication puts the Bible's two identitiesan ancient document revered by billions of contemporary readersinto conversation with one another. Written for an introductory Bible course, The Bible: Ancient Context and Ongoing Community is designed for Christians of all kinds, ""spiritual people"", and adherents to other religions. The Bible: Ancient Context and Ongoing Community:Includes Ancient Context sections in each chapter. These sections critically examine and describe the languages, authors, and culture of the ancient world in which the Bible took shape. Features Ongoing Community sections in each chapter. The sections address today's world and the concerns of living readers. It asks how should we make sense of the Bible's contents? How can contemporary readers understand a text with statements about ethics, spirituality, gender, and the natural world that often does not make sense to us? Generally frames issues presented the Christian tradition, however asks frank and difficult questions about the historicity of some of these texts, the moral applicability of these texts, and the traditional reading of these texts. Cites the works of other scholars and thinkers either as a way of highlighting established opinions on the matter at hand, or to acknowledge a direct source.

A mysterious woman comes out of the wheat fields late one night to complicate the life of Chief Ranger Aldo Springer, recently banished to Fort Pawnee National Historical Site in central Kansas. She demands asylum and backs up her demand by threatening to jump from the highest point in the historical site—a crow’s nest halfway up the hundred-foot mast of the fort’s flag pole. Against his judgment, Springer conceals her from the security forces of the state hospital, from which she escaped, and risks everything he cherishes to pursue a murderer along a cold trail.

Hoback flees to Wyoming to escape the big city violence that cost him his wife and almost turned him into a killer. Life is good in Hardwater until somebody butchers three people like deer, packs their bodies with uranium ore, and sends Hoback a poem, challenging him to stop the killing. The poet reveals an intimate knowledge of Hoback's violent past - and a perverse and terrifying interest in his son. This haunting tale of murder, betrayal, and a father's love takes place in a Wyoming uranium-mining town set in the middle of the wildest, most beautiful country south of Alaska.