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Archive for the ‘reseña’ Category

Alongside Gerhard von Rad, Walther Zimmerli is one of the giants of 20th-century biblical theology. In his customarily lively prose, Brueggemann introduces this collection of four essays by showing how Zimmerli is a model of theologically-acute biblical criticism who `stays close to the text’ and therefore does not pay too high a price for the rebuttal of larger concepts like those put forth by von Rad, G.E. Wright and others of the time. Brueggemann paid his dues in the scholarly salt mines by editing and interpreting Zimmerli and H.W. Wolff relatively early in his career, labor that certainly enriched his own tradition criticism later on. The essay that introduces this volume contains some delicious irony, such as the observation that recent (in 1982) continental scholarship is `inclined to return to a critical, pretheological perspective’. This slightly acid turnabout on the terms `theological’ and `precritical’ anticipates criticism of the mature Brueggemann and sometime soul-mates like B. Childs for being `too theological’ and even `precritical’. (more…)

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Some books introduce their topic more clearly by analyzing its various components parts than by taking a standard survey approach. This is the case with Brueggemann and Wolff’s excellent analysis of the Pentateuchal sources. Readers will discover in this slim volume a clear introduction to the standard ‘sources’ of Pentateuchal criticism, but also a compelling presentation of form/tradition criticism in the tradition of G. von Rad. (more…)

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In this thoroughly revised Princeton University doctoral dissertation, Craig Dykstra contrasts L. Kohlberg’s `juridical (decision-making) ethics’ with his own proposal for `visional ethics’. As the author notes in his introduction (pp. 1-4), the same landscape looks rather differently when viewed from these two divergent angles. Dykstra has adapted the fruit of his doctoral labors to a form likely to prove more helpful to religious educators, a group whose affinity to Kohlbergian ethics Dykstra finds surprising. (more…)

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Brevard Childs is a patient man. Few individuals could link such evident learning to a deep sympathy with the historical interpreters of the biblical book called Isaiah. The author’s empathy with the weighty labor of scholars who pour over an ancient work of such complexity is not only endearing. More importantly, it demonstrates that few of the book’s exegetes finished their work without achieving some mentionable merit, even when this is exceedingly modest by even Childs’ generous measure. (more…)

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You won’t find 48 pages’ worth of distilled wisdom like this for nonprofit executives and the board members the accompany them anywhere else. The only thing wrong with this gold-standard booklet is that its price will mean execs of some non-profits will not be able to afford a copy for every board member. This is so good it may be worth paying out of pocket to get into the hands of the board who you so badly need to think and act wisely.

Though directed mainly at chief executives, there is as much orientation for the board. I’ll make mine available to our leadership team as well, for the organizational theory and practical hints doesn’t get packaged any better than this.

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This extraordinary little book is a bona fide sleeper. A slightly hokey set of staged mentoring sessions allows David Cottrell to speak pithy and deeply practical counsel into the life and work of the harried executive who feels more victim than master of the tasks and crises that bombard him. (more…)

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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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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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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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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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