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Archive for the ‘Identity’ Category

Conversion in Luke-Acts

In Baker Academic, Brandon Walker, Community, Conversion, Identity, Joel B. GREEN, Luke-Acts on August 8, 2016 at 2:00 pm

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2016.08.15 | Joel B. Green. Conversion in Luke-Acts: Divine Action, Human Cognition, and the People of God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015.

Review by Brandon T. Walker, St. John’s College, Nottingham.

Many thanks to Baker Academic for providing a review copy.

Much of the contemporary Western conversation about defining conversion has centred around questions of cognition and morality, repentance and conversion, or around attempts to discover patterns in a conversion narrative. In Conversion in Luke-Acts Joel B. Green offers an insightful take on Luke’s understanding of conversion by using a cognitive and holistic approach. Conversion is an important contribution to Lukan studies as well as understanding ‘conversion’ in antiquity.

In the first chapter Green surveys the pertinent questions concerning conversion in the New Testament (14–15), such as: ‘Is conversion a cognitive category, a moral category or both?’ (14). Read the rest of this entry »

“My Brother Esau is a Hairy Man”: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel

In HB/OT, Identity, JiSeong Kwon, Oxford University Press, Susan NIDITCH on May 22, 2013 at 9:48 am

Hairy

2013.05.09 | Susan Niditch. “My Brother Esau is a Hairy Man”: Hair and Identity in Ancient Israel. Oxford: OUP, 2008. Pp. 168. ISBN: 978-0-19-518114-2. Hardback.

Review by JiSeong Kwon, Durham University.

Many thanks to OUP for kindly providing us with a review copy.

In this book, Niditch argues that the growing, cutting, and altering of ‘hair’ in Israel reflect the significant social, historical, religious circumstances of the ancient Near East and help us to read the cultural meanings behind texts. Biblical descriptions with regard to the treatment of hair—various terms such as ‘hair’, ‘razor’, ‘shave’, ‘cut’, and ‘beard’—enable us to be aware of the common cultural/social context in the corresponding culture and time. Read the rest of this entry »