Logos Bible Software posted another book in their Free Book of the Month” Promotion. Opening Up Genesis by Kurt Strassner was originally published by Dayone in 2009 as an easy-to-read Bible Study for either personal devotional reading or as a small group Bible Study. Strassner is a pastor at Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church and blogs at The Rest Stop.
The style of the Bible study is quite familiar, after a short commentary on a section of Genesis, Strassner asks a few guiding questions to help the reader dig deeper into the text. These would be ideal for small group discussions, the fifteen lessons make would be excellent for a weekly Bible Study. Do not think of this series as a “fluffy” Bible study, however. There is a great deal of good material in these books to enable a Bible student to get into the text of the Bible.
As a bonus, Logos has an “almost free book of the month,” Opening Up Exodus by Iain D. Campbell (pastor of Point Free Church, Free Church of Scotland on the Isle of Lewis) for only 99 cents. You can also enter a PunchTab contest to win the entire 40-book Opening Up the Bibleseries. Like the offer, this contest ends 12/31/2014.
Logos is giving away a copy of their nine-volume Tyndale Ministry Collection. The book collects a number of books by Greg Laurie (Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California), but all nine books are designed to help with discipleship and church growth.
How to Live Forever by Greg Laurie
Jesus Up Close: Meet Him. . . . Like Never Before by Skip Heitzig
New Believer’s Guide to Effective Christian Living: First Steps for New Christians by Greg Laurie
New Believer’s Guide to How to Share Your Faith: First Steps for New Christians by Greg Laurie
New Believer’s Guide to Prayer: First Steps for New Christians by Greg Laurie
Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality in Christian Counseling by Mark R. McMinn
Revolution by George Barna
The Upside Down Church by Greg Laurie
Why Believe?: Exploring the Honest Questions of Seekers by Greg Laurie
The winner will be chosen at random on August 19th and the collection will be sent to the winner’s Logos account. If you don’t have a Logos account, you can sign up for free here and download free apps to read your books on any device here.
How to Enter. Go to Steve K. McCoy’s site and enter the contest up to 13 times. Each prompted action you follow will earn you additional entries. You can always come back and share a link to the giveaway with your friends for additional entries.
Disclaimer: By entering this giveaway you consent to being signed up to Logos’ “Product Reviews” email list. You’ll receive emails featuring content written by me and other Christian bloggers!
Logos Bible Software has another nice selection for their “Free Book of the Month” promotion. This month they are partnering with Fortress Press to offer volume three of the Works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall. This volume is a new translation by Douglas Stephen Bax based on the German edition edited by Renate Bethge And Ilse Tödt. The 224 pages hardback edition retails at $40, although a paperback and Kindle edition is available.
Creation and Fall was originally a series of lectures on Genesis 1-4 given by Bonhoeffer at the University of Berlin (Winter, 1932-33). The series editor John W. De Gruchy comments ” It was a winter of profound discontent in Germany; it was also a time of confusion, anxiety, and, for many, false hope, as social and political upheavals led to the demise of the Weimar Republic and the birth of the Third Reich. In the midst of these events Bonhoeffer called his students to focus their attention on the word of God as the word of truth in a time of turmoil” (1).
Logos is also offering an “almost free” book: volume seven of the Bonhoeffer collection, Fiction from Tegel Prison, translated by Nancy Lukens and edited by Clifford J. Green. Bonhoeffer spent eighteen months at the Tegel Prison before being moved to the Gestapo prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in October, 1944. The text of this collection is drawn from Bonhoeffer’s own handwritten manuscripts of an incomplete drama and novel. This material may be unfamiliar to readers of more popular works such as Ethics or The Cost of Discipleship. The short story was not published until 1970 and the drama and novel not until 1978. Of these stories, Bonhoeffer said “There is a good deal of autobiography mixed with it.” Since these incomplete stories were written in his final years in prison, they offer an insight into Bonhoeffer’s heart in those difficult years. This book is a great value at 99 cents for the month of August.
Logos Bible Software has offered a free book each month for quite some time. Usually these were out-of-copyright classics that were widely available on the internet for free. But the last few months have been very good indeed. This month, Logos is giving away 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Puritans, by Bible Study Magazine contributor Elliot Ritzema. Ritzema served as an Old Testament editor for the Lexham English Bible and is a contributor to the Faithlife Study Bible. These 300 Quotations for Preachers are drawn from more than 70 authors including Anselm of Canterbury, Augustine of Hippo, Richard Baxter, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Calvin, G. K. Chesterton, John Chrysostom, Irenaeus of Lyons, Thomas à Kempis, Martin Luther, and more. The quotes appear with some scripture and the book includes a PowerPoint style slide for each quote suitable for church use (or spamming your facebook friends with Richard Baxter quotes).
In addition to this free book, Logos is also offering an “almost free” book, Study, Apply, Share: James (Lexham Press 2012). This is part of Logos’ own Pastorum Series and is written by Jeffrey E. Miller. This series is intended as a “sermon prep” jump starter,” including 5-7 questions with corresponding links to Logos resources two application ideas and two memorable worship service ideas as well as professionally designed slides with graphs and charts. The book is only 99 cents for a limited time. You can enter to win the full Pastorum Collection (Two Quotes for Preachers volumes and the Study, Apply, Share volumes on Mark, Luke, Philippians Hebrews and James, a $187 value).
Logos Bible Software is offering another excellent book for their “Free Book of the Month” Promotion. Last year these were all out-of-copyright classics widely available on the internet for free. Last month they offered one of the Armchair Theologian series from Westminster John Knox Press, this month Steve Moyise’s Jesus and Scripture (SPCK, 2010), and printed in the US by Baker Academic in 2011. Moyise is a professor of biblical studies at the University of Chichester and has written a number of books on the use of scripture in Revelation and Paul. This 140-page book is an excellent introduction to how Jesus used scripture, beginning in Mark, then Matthew and Luke, and finally John. There are a few text-boxes throughout the book that offer brief definitions / expansions on some technical/scholarly issues (What is Q? The Criteria of Authenticity, etc.) While there is nothing ground-breaking in this little book, it is a very nice introduction to some of the problems of Historical Jesus studies, and Moyise is able to explain some difficult problems clearly and concisely.
After surveying the data in the Gospels, Moyise offers three chapters on various approaches to this material. The minimalist approach to Jesus’ use of Scripture (represented by Geza Vermes, John Dominic Crossan, and Marcus Borg). These scholars tend to reject much of the Jesus tradition, beginning with the apocalyptic material (Son of Man sayings, etc). Crossan and Borg are well known for reducing the number of sayings of Jesus to a bare minimum (hence, “minimalists”). It is not that these writers seek to marginalize Jesus, but as Moyise says, “they believe that the Gospel writers diminished Jesus by making him the mouthpiece for their own egocentric claim that they are now the people that God will rescue from the imminent collapse of the universe” (91).
The moderate approach (represented by James Dunn and Tom Wright) accepts far more of the sayings of Jesus as authentic, although there is an acceptance of the fact that some of the sayings have been “embellished” by later Gospel writers.There is also more acceptance of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet of some sort, so Jesus’ own self understanding is based on texts like Dan. 7 , Zech. 9–14, Ps. 22 and Isa. 40–55. Not to give away the conclusion, but Moyise places himself on the side of the moderates (120-1).
The maximalist approach (represented by Charles Kimball and R. T. France) assumes that the Gospels represent a reliable account of what Jesus said and did, and that Jesus’ use of Scripture was analogous to other Jewish teachers of his day. Kimball especially focuses on Hillel’s seven rules as a way to describe Jesus’ teaching.
As a bonus, Logos is giving away a very nice six book collection of “Jesus Studies” published by SPCK (Baker or Westminster in the US). Each book in that collection is worth reading. Head on over to Logos Bible Software, get the free Logos book, and enter to win the whole collection.
Logos Bible Software posted another book in their Free Book of the Month” Promotion. Opening Up Genesis by Kurt Strassner was originally published by Dayone in 2009 as an easy-to-read Bible Study for either personal devotional reading or as a small group Bible Study. Strassner is a pastor at Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church and blogs at The Rest Stop.
