<p>Churches in the United States struggle with onboarding and orienting new associate pastors. At the same time, many of these churches lack a broader leadership development strategy for their ministry teams. To address these challenges, the project director developed a strategy for equipping newly hired ministry staff members at Lawndale Baptist Church (LBC) of Greensboro, North Carolina, with leadership behaviors especially needed for associate pastor ministry. In chapter one, the project director established objectives for the ministry project. He then outlined the ministry context for which he designed the project, also offering a rationale for his work. He defined key terms such as leadership, leadership behaviors, second chair leadership, followership, coaching, and ministry staff. The project director used chapter two to address the biblical and theological foundations for leadership from a variety of associate pastor roles. He worked through three passages using the framework of observation, interpretation, and application. The project director drew specific instructions for following spiritual leaders from Hebrews 13:7?19. He then considered a positive example of secondary leadership from Daniel 1 and a negative example from Numbers 12. In chapter three, the project director established the research and literature foundations for the project. He began by focusing on situational leadership, as well as the balance between great and godly leadership. The project director next considered resources related to associate pastor leadership behaviors, before studying leadership behaviors in the context of the church. He then studied the complementary leadership concepts of followership and 360-degree leadership. He concluded the section by looking at comparable tools and resources available through Lifeway?s Leadership Pipeline and already existing within various local churches. In chapter four, the project director shared the narrative description of his progress through the ministry project. He used the first section to describe the preparation phase of choosing a project, researching, and recruiting an expert panel. In the next segment, he outlined the steps of implementation, including building a survey, writing lesson plans for the training modules, and creating a Likert scale evaluation to serve as a pretest and posttest. The project director finished the chapter by describing the process of qualitative analysis used to evaluate the lesson plans for the training modules and his process of creating them. The project director used chapter five of the project to conduct an analysis of the completed ministry project. He began by providing a summary of the results and evaluating the fulfillment of the project objectives. The project director then described strengths, weaknesses, and patterns discovered through the process. He finished the chapter by drawing conclusions, offering suggestions for further research, and providing personal reflection on the ministry project.

This thesis examines how silence was understood by speakers of biblical Hebrew. Using the biblical books, Ben Sira, Dead Sea Scrolls, and inscriptions, it evaluates how seven lexemes referring to silence were used. Each reference was examined for clues to meaning, using syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, parallels, glosses, antonyms, and causal relations. The early versions (Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Syriac) were consulted to see if they might shed further light on ancient understandings of these words. Semitic languages were also surveyed for potential cognates that might reveal diachronic semantic development. The chosen lexemes divided into two related domains: restraint (of sound, of action) and cessation (of sound, of motion, of life). Part 1 covers words indicating restraint. Part 2 covers words indicating cessation. Part 3 briefly introduces peripheral words. The conclusion offers some observations about the field as a whole, describing how the lexemes overlap and differ. Tables and diagrams are offered to represent the richness and versatility of this field graphically.

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<p> Theological interpretation of Scripture has been ascendant in recent decades, and theologians and biblical scholars from a variety of backgrounds, areas of expertise, and ecclesial commitments have rallied around it. Increasingly, however, divisions are fraying the heretofore united front against historical criticism's dominance in academic biblical interpretation. This dissertation is an exploration of the reasons for these divisions. Its motivating thesis is that differences in ecclesiology lie behind disagreements about bibliology, which manifest in turn as divergences over theological interpretation. Prior to and operative within judgments about the nature, authority, and interpretation of the Bible stand judgments about the being, mission, and authority of the church. But the relationship between the two is not so linear as that. For the connections between them are direct and materially operative, and only more so when they remain implicit and therefore unexamined. Every account of the Bible both assumes and implies an account of the church, and vice versa: the lines of influence are reciprocal and circular. The Bible is always the church's book, the church always the community under the Bible's authority. </p><p> This dissertation responds, diagnostically and constructively, to this situation through engagement with particular figures. Specifically, it expounds one specific strand of bibliology influenced by the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth: the work, respectively, of John Howard Yoder, Robert Jenson, and John Webster. Each of these theologians is a contemporary Barthian <i> of a sort</i>, a student but not a disciple of the Swiss master. Given Barth's influence over the development of theological interpretation, this commonality is helpful both genetically (all three trace their thought to the&ndash;proximate&ndash;source) and substantively (their proposals share enough to make disagreement intelligible, and interesting). Moreover, Jenson, Webster, and Yoder represent, between them, the three great traditions of western Christendom: catholicism, the magisterial reformation, and the radical reformation. The specific ways in which their ecclesial commitments shape, inform, and at times determine their theological treatments of Scripture provide ideal examples of the phenomenon at issue in this dissertation.</p><p> Across five chapters, the project's principal aim is to demonstrate as well as examine the inseparable relationship between theology of Scripture and theology of the church. Along the way, the positions and proposals represented by Yoder, Jenson, and 'Webster come to light, and critical analysis of each highlights their respective strengths and shortcomings. In fulfilling these tasks the dissertation serves both as an initial reception of these theologians' bibliologies and as a critique of a feature&ndash;at times a problem&ndash;endemic to the current renewal of theological interpretation of Scripture.</p><p>

<p> Ezekiel the Tragedian&rsquo;s Exag&omacr;g&emacr;, a circa second-century BCE play, incorporates Jewish traditions that may associate Moses with resurrection and that describe Moses as having a vision in which he ascends to heaven, where he is elevated above the angels to a cosmic kingship. The extra-biblical traditions in this drama present Moses as more similar to the Jesus of the NT than does the biblical tradition of Moses. New Testament depictions of Jesus&rsquo;s ascent to heaven and portrayals of Jesus through a Moses typology may be influenced by these traditions. This study will focus on traditions represented in the ascent-to-heaven scene (Ezek. Trag. 68&ndash;89) and in the scout&rsquo;s report (Ezek. Trag. 243&ndash;69) and will examine the likely influences of such traditions in the Letter to the Hebrews.</p><p>

<p> While ethical arguments for nonviolence have persisted for generations, theological arguments for an absolutely nonviolent God have recently emerged. Some theologians deem violence in every form to be immoral and punishment to be a form and cause of violence, so they contend that a moral God must be nonviolent and non-retributive. Also, this nonviolent God assertion undermines other doctrines including penal substitution in the atonement, eternal punishment in hell, and temporal judgments in biblical narratives. In response, I will argue that God&rsquo;s justice has a retributive aspect, for He gives to people what they deserve including punishing sinners or a substitute in their place. His justice is a necessary divine attribute, for to be true to Himself, God highly values His image bearers by dignifying their free will and choices by assuring that they experience the results of their decisions. Thus God&rsquo;s retributive justice provides a moral framework for His violent judgments. </p><p>

The book of Esther stands in a complex relationship to the Christian tradition. Accepted as canonical by ancient Israel, Judaism, and Christianity, the book nonetheless is known in the Church not for its powerful narrative of Jewish deliverance, but rather for the ways in which Christian interpreters have rejected the narrative as too violent and too “Jewish” to be normative in any way for Christians. Reading the Hebrew version of the Esther story preserved in the Masoretic Text, one at first notices the story’s complete lack of overt references to Israel, Torah, or even the God of Israel, suggesting to many gentiles throughout Christian history that it is not a religious narrative, but rather a story of Jewish nationalism “gone mad” in a willful excess of ethnic violence, as one interpreter has described it. Reading the narrative with attention to the myriad of canonical allusions contained within the story, however, the interpreter will recognize that the God of Israel is indeed present in the Esther story, manifest precisely in the perduring presence of his covenantal partners, the Jews. This reading of the narrative is made apparent in the Septuagint versions of the Esther story, which display their religious sensibilities overtly. But this reading is also evident in the Masoretic Text, seen first in the victory of Esther and Mordecai over Haman. This victory both represents and embodies the Jewish victory over Amalek, the cosmic opponent whose existence throughout history has continually challenged and undermined the divine order in creation. The reader then sees that Israel is present in the Esther story in the zeraʻ hayyĕhûdîm, the seed of the Jews who (perhaps even unknowingly) enact a real and efficacious form of liturgical memory in their fasting, penitence, and military action. Despite the characters’ (and the narrative’s) religious silence, the portrayal of Jewish victory in the Esther story challenges the Church to rethink its understanding of salvation history, as well as the Church’s place in the biblical understanding of God’s covenant with Israel and the divine order of creation.

The purpose of this research paper is to follow a line of ongoing investigations that discuss dates for the origin of the synoptic gospels and evaluate the arguments for early, late, and intermediate dating and their susceptibility to critique from opposing arguments. There are three principal components in dating theories: (1) data from the Greek in the earliest texts (2) data concerning the provenance of the earliest texts (3) and data from the historical context of the first century. The study is significant because, contrary to what might be expected, the starting and key point in deciding on a composition date is the Book of Acts of the Apostles. This study compiled and integrated information, in an unbiased fashion, based on reading and researching large numbers of texts by scholars, such as Hengel, who support an earlier dating, as well as those, such as Fitzmyer, who support a later dating. Furthermore, this study also required knowledge of those scholars who propose dates that do not fall into these main categories. The research demonstrated that by looking at the Book of Acts of the Apostles as the key starting point, the synoptic gospels were most likely composed before 70 CE, therefore, supporting scholars who argue for an earlier date.

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