Joel S. Baden

Candida R. Moss

How the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make America a “Bible nation” Like many evangelical Christians, the Green family of Oklahoma City believes that America was founded on a “biblical worldview as a Christian nation.” But the Greens are far from typical evangelicals in other ways. The billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby, a huge nationwide chain of craft stores, the Greens came to national attention in 2014 after successfully suing the federal government over their religious objections to provisions of the Affordable Care Act. What is less widely known is that the Greens are now America’s biggest financial supporters of Christian causes—and they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in an ambitious effort to increase the Bible’s influence on American society. In Bible Nation, Candida Moss and Joel Baden provide the first in-depth investigative account of the Greens’ sweeping Bible projects and the many questions they raise. Bible Nation tells the story of the Greens’ rapid acquisition of an unparalleled collection of biblical antiquities; their creation of a closely controlled group of scholars to study and promote their collection; their efforts to place a Bible curriculum in public schools; and their construction of a $500 million Museum of the Bible near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Bible Nation reveals how these seemingly disparate initiatives promote a very particular set of beliefs about the Bible—and raise serious ethical questions about the trade in biblical antiquities, the integrity of academic research, and more. Bible Nation is an important and timely account of how a vast private fortune is being used to promote personal faith in the public sphere—and why it should matter to everyone.

The United States of Hobby Lobby

Bible Nation

Moss begins by tracing the theme of imitating Jesus through suffering in the literature of the Jesus movement and early church and its application in martyrdom literature. She demonstrates the importance of imitating the sufferings of Christ as a practice and ethos in the Jesus movement. She then proceeds to the interpretations of the martyr's death and afterlife, arguing against the dominant theory that the martyr's death was viewed as a sacrifice, and finding that in their post-mortem existence martyrs continue to be assimilated to Christ, closely resembling the exalted Christ as intercessors, judges, enthroned monarchs and banqueters.

Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom

The Other Christs

Joseph Verheyden

Tobias Nicklas

Christopher Tuckett

Anyone who wishes to manage their sources adequately must work with categories that help to bring order to the transcribed material. In many cases, such categories simultaneously shape the way in which we evaluate our sources. Critical reflection of the chosen categories is therefore crucial for robust historical study. This rings especially true when certain categories are not viewed through neutral eyes, but through polemically judgemental eyes. One extreme case would be the category of "apocryphalness". In some areas, associations like "fraudulent" versus and "secret" – interlinked to this term in Antiquity – are still shaping the way Christian apocrypha are considered to this day. Closely associated with this is the use of the adjectival categories like "(proto)-orthodox", "majority church" versus those like "heretical" (again polemically pejorative). In their chapters, the contributors demonstrate not only how the set limits – as referred to the categories above – do indeed play a role, but more importantly, where these limits have been exceeded and where we must therefore work with new and different categories to understand the meaning of "apocryphal" writings and/or writings that have "become apocryphal" in terms of the history of an ancient Christianity perceived as multi-dimensional and dynamic. The following questions play a significant role in our understanding of this: In which contexts and by which groups are "newly apocryphal" writings used? Where do apocryphal writings or those "newly apocryphal" play a contextual role that would, nowadays, be perceived as "orthodox"? Which functions are assign thereto?

The Other Side: Apocryphal Perspectives on Ancient Christian "Orthodoxies"

Using perspectives on death from ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish traditions, a theology professor discusses the history of Christian martyrdom and challenges the traditional understanding of the spread of Christianity.

Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions

Ancient Christian Martyrdom

A path-breaking scholar's insightful reexamination of the resurrection of the body and the construction of the self When people talk about the resurrection they often assume that the bodies in the afterlife will be perfect. But which version of our bodies gets resurrected--young or old, healthy or sick, real-to-life or idealized? What bodily qualities must be recast in heaven for a body to qualify as both ours and heavenly? The resurrection is one of the foundational statements of Christian theology, but when it comes to the New Testament only a handful of passages helps us answer the question "What will those bodies be like?" More problematically, the selection and interpretation of these texts are grounded in assumptions about the kinds of earthly bodies that are most desirable. Drawing upon previously unexplored evidence in ancient medicine, philosophy, and culture, this illuminating book both revisits central texts--such as the resurrection of Jesus--and mines virtually ignored passages in the Gospels to show how the resurrection of the body addresses larger questions about identity and the self.

Divine Bodies

In the Book of Genesis, the first words God speaks to humanity are "Be fruitful and multiply." From ancient times to today, these words have been understood as a divine command to procreate. Fertility is viewed as a sign of blessedness and moral uprightness, while infertility is associated with sin and moral failing. Reconceiving Infertility explores traditional interpretations such as these, providing a more complete picture of how procreation and childlessness are depicted in the Bible. Closely examining texts and themes from both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, Candida Moss and Joel Baden offer vital new perspectives on infertility and the social experiences of the infertile in the biblical tradition. They begin with perhaps the most famous stories of infertility in the Bible—those of the matriarchs Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel—and show how the divine injunction in Genesis is both a blessing and a curse. Moss and Baden go on to discuss the metaphorical treatments of Israel as a "barren mother," the conception of Jesus, Paul's writings on family and reproduction, and more. They reveal how biblical views on procreation and infertility, and the ancient contexts from which they emerged, were more diverse than we think. Reconceiving Infertility demonstrates that the Bible speaks in many voices about infertility, and lays a biblical foundation for a more supportive religious environment for those suffering from infertility today.

Candida R. Moss

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