Israel Books

David and the Giant is a delightful book. It tells the storyof David and Goliath in a way that has our son captivated and theartwork is bright and interesting. We have been searching for bible story books that would engage and interest our 2 1/2 year old for sometime. We have finally found a real winner! I highly recommend this book!

I love these books. I first received Jonah's Trash God's Treasure as a gift and I was so excited to see that Joel had another book out. Not only do these books tell a wonderful story, my child loves to look for all the diffrent items used to make each scene. He goes back and looks and them over and over. What clever books

Here, says the author, is a "devotional study of what God can do with a man who, though terribly tough and passionate, has a will set to do God's will."

The first of a series, this volume describes the life of David, the shepherd-king, under King Saul. Constantly showing how believers today can meet God through this story, Keller deals with the drama and color of David's stormy relationship with Saul, his friendship with Jonathan, his love for Abigail, Nabal's widow, his interaction with the soldiers he commanded, and his respect for prophet, priest, and king in Israel.

Keller's readers have learned to expect just this kind of faithfulness to the biblical record, along with the author's knowledge of the primitive setting of the Bible, and his ability to knife through pretense and self-importance with sharp spiritual perception. On every page, the reader is confronted with stark calls to obedience such as this.

It was David's lot to follow Israel's first king, Saul -- a concession in governance which God allowed only at Israel's willful insistence. As Saul proved to be equally willful, Keller observes that "Sorrow up sorrow, both to ourselves, to Christ, and to others, most of us prefer to do our own thing in life, to please ourselves rather than Him."

Similarly, with unblinking frankness, Keller refuses to gloss over David's lapses in courage, faith, and obedience. But he finds in the giant-killer and king-to-be a heart that could be touched by its own infirmities, repent, and search eagerly for God's renewing Spirit. As with believers today, whose lives are mixtures of darkness and light, there is hope in the story of David that we might yet be anointed for the Master's use.

This is a book to be savored in quiet personal study, read for both its historical and devotional content, or used for stimulating group discussion.

This is not nearly as nice as another David Robert's book, Egypt: Yesterday and Today, but the images are just as beautiful, even in their reduced size. His work is truly amazing and after traveling in Egypt you really appreciate his vision of the past.

This book is a must for anyone interested in the life of David, or anyone interested in God's role in our lives, for that matter. Mary Nelle Schaap is an insightful and wise writer.

David's Mighty Men is now fully translated into Spanish...and is for sale on Amazon at the SAME GREAT PRICE!!
ISBN 1600390595. Los Poderosos Hombres de David!

All the depth & dramatic richness of King David's life permeate this classic study by FW Krummacher, acknowledged by many to be the greatest evangelical German preacher of the nineteenth century.

David is an enigmatic figure. He has stories attributed to him that are reminiscent of legendary figures from Greek mythology, yet has other stories that show him as a very flawed, very human figure. He seems loyal and disloyal, caring and selfish, naïve and manipulative - almost as if there were several personalities present. Yet through all of this complexity, the single figure of David is more prominent than almost any other human figure in the Hebrew Scriptures (for instance, David's name appears about 1080 times, compared with 772 for Moses, the next most-cited person). Moses, too, is a flawed person, but the depth of detail of David makes him in many ways a more interesting figure; his close-ness yet distance to the Divine also makes him more like the others of us ordinary human beings.

Steussy identifies four different narrative strands that give the portrait of David to us: The history from Genesis to Kings (in particular, the narrative in Samuel); the Chronicles, a parallel yet distinct history from the other; the Psalms, many attributed to David, others talking about David as God's chosen or special one, and the general sense of all the Psalms being 'of David'; and finally, snippets of David from prophetic literature. While the image of David continues to be replayed and embellished in current art and literature, Steussy confines this survey to the actual Biblical presentations of David.

Steussy devotes major attention to the first three strands of David; the largest strand being the first, the primary history set forth from Torah to Kings. She likens the first strand to being a mural realistically painted, the second strand from Chronicles as being more akin to a stained-glass window image of David, and the Psalms as being a collage portrait of David. The fourth strand is more difficult to pin down, and only one chapter is devoted to it, because the scattered references do not make up, in terms of volume, a significant addition; however, they do add, rather like spices, a flavouring to the other primary pieces. Through all the portraits, 'David stands perpetually at the point where divine power enters our world'.

Steussy also delineates the different ways of approaching the Biblical text: dogmatic, critical, and artistic. Being a professor in a liberal-academic setting, perhaps it is natural that Steussy would approach the topic primary from the scholarly-critical method. However, she does not discount the other approaches as invalid or without value, and draws in on occasion differing possibilities based on the variety of approaches available.

While this is a scholarly text, it is not part of that body of work that is 'by scholars, for scholars'. Steussy avoids jargon and discipline-specific terminology whenever possible, and when not possible, defines and explains the language she is using. Thus, this is a book accessible to any person interested in topics such as history and Biblical studies regardless of specific educational background.

Steussy does have an amazing care for attention to detail; for example, having chosen to use the text of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible as the primary text for references, she then in turn analyses and criticises the translation and word choice wherever it seems to her problematic. This kind of attention also draws in references from outside sources and cross-references in the Biblical texts to further illuminate points along the way.

Steussy has an extensive bibliography which lists many valuable resources. There are endnotes (I have a preference as a reader for footnotes, but the placement decision is often a publisher one rather than an author one), and blessedly a topical index in addition to an index of Biblical references.

This is a fascinating study of David, which would serve well for individual study, classroom assignments and Bible study groups.

I have lived and traveled extensively in Israel and have found this book to be an enourmous help. It has easy to follow trips, which can be done in a day and allows the reader to see sights not listed in other travel guides. I have recommended it to others and have heard nothing but positive feedback. I advise bringing this book along with a travel guide with places to stay and eat for a complete and easy trip to Israel.

There are a host of volumes available now on recreations and translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and even more available on the possible (and often bizarre) interpretations of the scrolls, particularly of the non-biblical pieces. The Dead Sea Scrolls have been an object of fascination, debate, and sometimes suspicion since the first ones surfaced a generation ago in the deserts around the Dead Sea in the late 1940s. This particular book on the Dead Sea Scrolls is not just another translation, nor is it another collection of essays, though it has both elements -- it is, in fact, a catalog of a major exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Public Museum of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The editor, Ellen Middlebrook Herron, is to be commended for putting together such an interesting volume that both complements the exhibition yet serves as a compelling text in its own right.

The layout and design is a very eye-catching arrangement -- the book is filled will full-colour, glossy photographs from start to finish. This is no mere catalog with 'mug shots' of objects on display. The photography is interesting to the eye; mixed through the book are photographs of the desert areas around the Dead Sea, the Qumran settlement site, the Dead Sea itself (one particular shot of underwater in the Dead Sea, followed by the Dead Sea at dusk, is stunning), and historical photographs of early scroll scholars at work, so the reader will get a sense not only of the history in the scrolls, but the history of the scrolls.

This front section is interspersed with some essays by people whose names would be immediately recognised by anyone who follows the tales of the scrolls -- Emmanuel Tov and James Vanderkam are two names that stand out, but the others (such as Ruth Peled and Ayala Sussman, who worked on another exhibition guide) will also be familiar.

The heart of the book is, of course, the catalogue to the exhibition, arranged in a very practical and informative way. There are two primary sections: From the Qumran Caves, a study of scrolls and scroll fragments; and From the Qumran Ruin, a study of the artifacts from the Qumran settlement site.

The scrolls are all presented with explanation of what is being shown (calendar, phylactery, biblical text, etc.), dating, Hebrew letters printed out with most probable choices filling in the gaps in the scrolls, and an English translation. The page layout is such that the scroll photographs are set against the pure white page, without artificial 'background', which makes their appearance all the most stunning and realistic. The artifacts are sometimes presented against a black page, and sometimes against a white page background (whichever provides the best viewing in contrast, I would imagine). These catalog entries include most likely dates and descriptions. These include everything from pottery and inkwells to dried dates and coins.

Concluding the catalog is a section on resources. A very helpful glossary of terms, bibliographic information presented topically for further study, and acknowledgements (particularly for the photographs, this is nice to have, to know from whom other such wonderful photographs may be found) complete the text. Often I would take points off for lack of an index, but the quality of this text is such I cannot bring myself to do it.

This is an Eerdmans publication produced in cooperation with the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Public Museum of Grand Rapids. They should all be very proud of this fine book. Herron says in her introductory essay that the scrolls' true legacy may be that they bring people of different faiths and nationalities together to a common past. This book is certainly one of collaboration between many people; rare is a book produced by 'committee' a good thing -- this is a rare exception.