The Vanguard Messiah

In recent years the role of religion in the avant-garde has begun to attract scholarly interest. The present volume focuses on the work of the Romanian Jewish poet and visual artist Isidore Isou (1925–2007) who founded the lettrist movement in the 1940s. The Jewish tradition played a critical part in the Western avant-garde as represented by lettrism. The links between lettrism and Judaism are substantial, yet they have been largely unexplored until now. The study investigates the works of a movement that explicitly emphasises its vanguard position while relying on a medieval religious tradition as a source of radical textual techniques. It accounts for lettrism’s renunciation of mainstream traditions in favour of a subversive tradition, in this case Jewish mysticism. The religious inclination of lettrism also affects the notion of the avant-garde. The elements of the Jewish tradition in Isou’s theories and artistic production evoke a broader framework where religion and experimental art supplement each other.

In recent years the role of religion in the avant-garde has begun to attract scholarly interest. The present volume focuses on the work of the Romanian Jewish poet and visual artist Isidore Isou (1925–2007) who founded the lettrist movement in the 1940s. The Jewish tradition played a critical part in the Western avant-garde as represented by lettrism. The links between lettrism and Judaism are substantial, yet they have been largely unexplored until now. The study investigates the works of a movement that explicitly emphasises its vanguard position while relying on a medieval religious tradition as a source of radical textual techniques. It accounts for lettrism’s renunciation of mainstream traditions in favour of a subversive tradition, in this case Jewish mysticism. The religious inclination of lettrism also affects the notion of the avant-garde. The elements of the Jewish tradition in Isou’s theories and artistic production evoke a broader framework where religion and experimental art supplement each other.

Have you ever thought of Jesus as a lawyer? It may sound odd, but at times in His ministry, Jesus wore his lawyer hat. When he defended the adulterous woman, when he argued from Scripture that the disciples were fine to pick grain on the Sabbath, and in other instances, Jesus insightfully applied to uphold justice and promote goodwill. The legal aspects of Jesus’ ministry have long been obscured or misunderstood, particularly his interactions with and attitude toward the law and lawyers. Jesus’ desire in his day and ours is to use the law to secure the rights of people to hear the gospel and to set humanity free. In other words, to be the best citizens we can be, we need to follow in the footsteps of the greatest citizen who ever lived. Jesus in the Courtroom covers topics like: Why we should care about the law Strategic involvement with the law How God has used the law to expand His kingdom What can happen when we partner with legal professionals How citizenship is part of discipleship Christian citizenship in matters like adoption, abortion, minimum wage, foster care, and schools We are citizens of two kingdoms, but many of us duck and run when it comes to civil life. For anyone who cares about their community—parents, teachers, pastors, you name it—engagement with our legal system can play a huge role in the health of our communities and in cultivating a context where the gospel can flourish. Jesus in the Courtroom will help us understand not only why we have failed to appreciate the legal aspect of Jesus’ life, but also to understand and cooperate with his legal ministry to us and through us. If we are going to be faithful “citizen disciples” in this challenging new world, we need to look anew at how Jesus taught, thought, and interacted with the legal establishment of his day.

The Ancient Hebrew scriptures are many thousands of years old. However, these influential texts still have the potential to influence our daily lives profoundly as well as to shape world events. At About the Time of the End is a new book that seeks to examine biblical narratives pertaining to Ancient Hebraic roots while juxtaposing them with scientific findings in the areas of archeology and evolutionary genetics. Author Anaviel Ben Eleazer originally composed the chapters that comprise the book as a series of individual essays. In compiling them into a book, it is his hope that the reader will be presented with an alternate view of biblical history and a new understanding of Ancient Hebraic scripture. The book is written from the informed perspective of someone who has lived in a Hebrew community in Israel for nearly four decades. At About the Time of the End presents nuanced views on a variety of biblical subjects and employs a new perception and understanding that's based on a deep appreciation of the Hebrew language and the Ancient Hebrew lexicon in particular. Anaviel Ben Eleazer was born in Atlanta, GA and raised in Detroit, MI. However, since 1974 he has lived in Israel, where he raised his family in the Negev town of Arad. While also running his own entertainment-booking agency, he has authored numerous articles and other short pieces over the years. At About the Time of the End is his first published work. Publisher's website: http: //sbpra.com/AnavielBenEleazer

Popular music and its listeners are strongly associated with newness and youth. Young people can stay up late dancing to the latest hits and use cutting-edge technology for listening to and sharing fresh music. Many young people incorporate their devotion to new artists and styles into their own developing personalities. However, if popular music is a genre meant for the youthful, what are listeners to make of the widespread sampling of music from decades-old R&B tracks, sold-out anniversary tours by aging musicians, retrospective box sets of vintage recordings, museum exhibits, and performances by current pop stars invoking music and images of the past? In Same Old Song: The Enduring Past in Popular Music, John Paul Meyers argues that these phenomena are part of what he calls “historical consciousness in popular music.” These deep relationships with the past are an important but underexamined aspect of how musicians and listeners engage with this key cultural form. In chapters ranging across the landscape of twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, Meyers finds indications of historical consciousness at work in multiple genres. Rock music canonizes its history in tribute performances and museums. Jazz and pop musicians cover tunes from the “Great American Songbook.” Hip-hop and contemporary R&B singers invoke Black popular music from the 1960s and 1970s. Examining the work of influential artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Kanye West, Prince, D’Angelo, and Janelle Monáe, Meyers argues that contemporary artists’ homage to the past is key for understanding how music-lovers make meaning of popular music in the present.

The Way of Jesus Christ discusses the following topics: 1. The symbol of the way embodies the aspect of process and brings out christology's alignment towards its goal. This symbol can comprehend Christ's way from his birth in the Spirit and his baptism in the Spirit to his self-surrender on Golgotha. It also makes it possible to understand the path of Christ as the way leading from his resurrection to his parousia-the way he takes in the Spirit to Israel, to the nations, and into the breadth and depth of the cosmos. 2. The symbol of the way makes us aware that every human christology is historically conditioned and limited. Every human christology is a 'christology of the way, ' not yet a 'christology of the home country, ' a christology of faith, not yet a christology of sight. So christology is no more than the beginning of eschatology; and eschatology, as the Christian faith understands it, is always the consummation of christology. 3. Finally, but not least important: every way is an invitation. A way is something to be followed. 'The way of Jesus Christ' is not merely a christological category. It is an ethical category too. Anyone who enters upon Christ's way will discover who Jesus really is; and anyone who really believes in Jesus and the Christ of God will follow him along the way he himself took. Christology and christopraxis find one another in the full and completed knowledge of Christ. This christology links dogmatics and ethics in closer detail than in the previous volumes.

In How Jesus Became Christian, Barrie Wilson asks "How did a young rabbi become the god of a religion he wouldn’t recognize, one which was established through the use of calculated anti-Semitism?" Colourfully recreating the world of Jesus Christ, Wilson brings the answer to life by looking at the rivalry between the "Jesus movement," informed by the teachings of Matthew and adhering to Torah worship, and the "Christ movement," headed by Paul, which shunned Torah. Wilson suggests that Paul’s movement was not rooted in the teachings and sayings of the historical Jesus, but solely in Paul’s mystical vision of Christ, a man Paul actually never met. He then shows how Paul established the new religion through anti-Semitic propaganda, which ultimately crushed the Jesus Movement. Sure to be controversial, this is an exciting, well-written popular religious history that cuts to the heart of the differences between Christianity and Judaism, to the origins of one of the world’s great religions and, ultimately, to the question of who Jesus Christ really was – a Jew or a Christian.

Who are the Messianic Jews? What do they believe and practice? What is the Jewish community's reaction to the development of Messianic Judaism? In this pioneering study, Dan Cohn-Sherbok traces the development of the Messianic movement from ancient times to its transformation after World War II. Focusing on the nature of the movement today, the volume continues with a detailed examination of Messianic practices, and the place of Messianic Judaism within the contemporary Jewish community.

Reconstructions of Jesus occurred in Asia long before the Western search for the historical Jesus began in earnest. This enterprise sprang up in seventh-century China and seventeenth-century India, encouraged by the patronage and openness of the Chinese and Indian imperial courts. While the Western quest was largely a Protestant preoccupation, in Asia the search was marked by its diversity: participants included Hindus, Jains, Muslims, Catholics, and members of the Church of the East. During the age of European colonialism, Jesus was first seen by many Asians as a tribal god of the farangis, or white Europeans. But as his story circulated, Asians remade Jesus, at times appreciatively and at other times critically. R. S. Sugirtharajah demonstrates how Buddhist and Taoist thought, combined with Christian insights, led to the creation of the Chinese Jesus Sutras of late antiquity, and explains the importance of a biography of Jesus composed in the sixteenth-century court of the Mughal emperor Akbar. He also brings to the fore the reconstructions of Jesus during the Chinese Taiping revolution, the Korean Minjung uprising, and the Indian and Sri Lankan anti-colonial movements. In Jesus in Asia, Sugirtharajah situates the historical Jesus beyond the narrow confines of the West and offers an eye-opening new chapter in the story of global Christianity.