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Archive for 2007

Creation against chaos, creation for community: Bernhard W. Anderson, Creation Versus Chaos. The Reinterpretation of Mythical Symbolism in the Bible

Posted in denkschrift, tagged , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Reissued with a new afterword twenty years after its initial publication, this little volume places in the reader’s hands a reliable and thought-provoking survey of how Israelite faith reinterpreted the mythical elements that lay strewn about its terrain. American Jews and American Christians look, speak, and think like Americans, so Belgium Jews and Christians do the same in that country. Even so, Israel-as it worked out the often radical commitments of Yahwistic faith-would have looked, lived, written and prayed in a manner well accented by the Canaanite milieu in which it developed. It is the religio-mythical elements of that environment to which Anderson so helpfully directs his scrutiny. (more…)

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When ‘broken’ really means ‘whole’: Gene Edwards, A Tale of three Kings. A Study in Brokenness

Posted in clarity, reseña, tagged , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

A mystical quality lingers about this tale of the biblical kings Saul, David, and Absalom, and so it grows even on readers who have been well vaccinated against insipid allegorizing. (more…)

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no word less deconstructible than hope: Walter Brueggemann, Ichabod Toward Home. The Journey of Gods Glory

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

This is not Walter Brueggemann’s best book. Still, it is the measure of this man’s perceptive insight that a lecture series at Princeton Theological Seminary with off-the-cuff roughnessess still evident can make for the kind of compelling reading that merely fine writers are fortunate to achieve once or twice in a career. (more…)

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Courage: Patrick M. Lencioni, The Five Temptations of a CEO. A Leadership Fable

Posted in clarity, reseña on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

If the proof is in the pudding, the value of this recipe is that I have faced three concrete ‘CEO moments’ since finishing Lencioni’s fable two days ago that have proven to be the turf for implementation of his well-told counsel to CEOs who live or die by clarity and courage. (more…)

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keep it simple: Patrick M. Lencioni, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. A Leadership Fable

Posted in clarity, reseña, tagged , , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Patrick Lencioni writes stories. Lots of them.

He calls them `fables’. `Leadership fables’, to be precise. It’s a growing genre in business publications, perhaps a sign that such writers and their editors and marketers have caught on to the power of narrative to make a point that often comes across as dry and abstract when it’s treated, well, dryly and abstractly. (more…)

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no other option: fix the problem: Patrick M. Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, A Leadership Fable

Posted in clarity, reseña, tagged , , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Following his success with The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive and the The Five Temptations of a CEO, management consultant Pat Lencioni turns his observant eye to the team and its dynamic interrelationship. The results are outstanding. (more…)

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Begin *here*!: Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam. Holy War and Unholy Terror

Posted in denkschrift, reseña on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

A first reader of this renowned Princeton Arabist might puzzle for a moment over whether he is a sympathist or an adversary of Arabs, Islam, and the Muslims. He is both. (more…)

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a contrarian must read for biblical scholars who assume too much: Jon D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism. Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

These six collected essays from one of biblical scholarship’s leading thoughtful curmudgeons prove beyond doubt that unexamined assumptions corrode the core of the enterprise of biblical scholarship in the secular academy. That they come from the pen of a Jewish scholar teaching at one of liberal Protestantism’s foremost shrines (Harvard Divinity School) is only the first irony that Levenson explores here with contrarian zeal. Readers who believe in the craft—whether naively or upon reflection—will find Levenson’s articles an unsettling and necessary read. (more…)

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possibly Brueggemann’s best work: Walter Brueggemann, The Land. Place As Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (Overtures to Biblical Theology)

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 7, 2007| 7 Comments »

Though this may be the best of Walter Brueggemann’s many books, it is not a work for the faint of heart. Brueggemann’s prose sometimes seems to overtake his meaning. One wonders at times-Brueggemann himself might say-whether there is a surfeit of meaning in this text that eludes immediate penetration, or simply a surplus of words. (more…)

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memory and hope: Michael Fishbane, Biblical Text and Texture. A Literary Reading of Selected Texts

Posted in denkschrift, reseña on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Because it stands in the shadow of Fishbane’s monumental Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, this little book is not so well known twenty-five years after its publication. That’s a pity, for it exhibits the art of Fishbane’s literarily sensitive readings of key biblical texts to a readership that will not labor through the massive methodological and typological argument of the larger work. If Biblical Interpretation is a four-movement symphony for full orchestra and a price tag to match, Text and Texture is a savory lunchtime string trio in the sun, offered gratis to passersby.

(more…)

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