The Return of Oral Hermeneutics: As Good Today as It Was for the Hebrew Bible and First-Century Christianity
Author(s): Tom Steffen & William Bjoraker
Publisher: Wipf & Stock
Price: $2.99      

Have Western exegetes turned an Eastern book into a Western one? Has our fondness for a fixed printed text capable of being analyzed with precision and exactitude blinded us to other hermeneutic possibilities? Does God require all people to be able to analyze grammar to interpret Scripture? Does God assume all people can interpret Scripture through oral means? The authors recognize the effects of centuries of literacy socialization that produced a blind spot in the Western Christian world–the neglect by most in the academies, agencies, and assemblies of the foundational and forceful role orality had on the biblical text and teaching. From the inspired spoken word of the prophets, including Jesus (pre-text), to the elite literate scribes who painstakingly hand-printed the sacred text, to post-text interpretation and teaching, the footprint of orality throughout the entire process is acutely visible to those having the oral-aural influenced eyes of the Mediterranean ancients. Could oral hermeneutics be the “mother of relational theology”?

Compassionate Presence: A Radical Response to Human Suffering
Author(s): Rolf R. Nolasco Jr. & R. Vincent MacDonald
Publisher: Wipf & Stock
Price: $2.99      

Compassion plays a central role in the teachings of all world religions. Christianity in particular demonstrates its vitality through compassionate engagement with those suffering with Christ serving as a paradigm and source of motive power. These concrete acts of mercy and solidarity disclose God’s intimate regard for the welfare of humanity. The purpose of this book is to affirm compassion as the pulsating heartbeat of Christian theology and praxis through the hermeneutical perspectives of brain science, psychology, and practical theology. More importantly, it offers readers specific compassion cultivation practices that will nurture the trait of compassion as a way of incarnating God’s compassionate presence and response to a world marked with suffering of all kinds.

“Nolasco and MacDonald remind us that compassion is the vital center of the Christian life. They not only ground compassion theologically–they explain how it works neuro-physiologically. In a world all too prone to demonizing the other, their work comes as a healing grace, an act of compassion itself.”
–Frank Rogers, author of Practicing Compassion, and Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus

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