Anthony Phillips - Böcker

Dr Phillips's volume, like the others in the series, contains the text in the NEB translation, with introductory material preceding it, and a commentary directly following each section of text. Dr Phillips explains the nature and function of the whole book, its place in Jewish religious history and thought, and among the Old Testament books, and its continuing relevance today.

This successful volume of essays by distinguished scholars not only makes a contribution to the study of Old Testament prophets but also summarizes scholarship in a way particularly appropriate to students, giving access to material available otherwise only in other languages or in journals difficult to obtain.

These studies by an academic who is also a former practising lawyer seek to establish the principles of biblical law as represented in the Sinai traditions. Specific topics covered include adultery, family law, slavery, animals and wealth; respect for life and the general biblical moral tradition are also discussed. The collection also deals with wider issues of prophecy and law, the relationship of torah and mishpat (especially in relation to Second Isaiah), and laws in the book of Ruth, and includes a discussion of the place of biblical law in contemporary society.

The second volume of Sergey Prokofiev's recently uncovered Diaries covers the years 1915 to 1922. It describes in detail the genesis and the problematic path to performance of major works in his canon, and the life-changing experiences of living in war-torn and revolutionary Russia, and deciding to leave for the mythic America he had long dreamed of visiting. The Diaries chart the author's swings of fortune, the loneliness of the émigré, his encounters with a luminous range of personalities from music, theatre, art and literature, and the search for love and friendship, all cast in the burnished prose of a born master, not just of music, but of words.

Prokofiev, a compulsive diarist, gifted and idiosyncratic writer, possessed an incorrigibly sardonic curiosity about individuals and events. When he left Russia following the 1917 Revolution, his diaries were recovered from the family flat in Petrograd, and Prokofiev smuggled them out of the country after his first return to the Soviet Union in 1927. The later diaries, written in the West, were brought back by legal decree after the composer's death, to be kept in a special, closed section of the Russian State Archive. Eventually Prokofiev's son Svyatoslav was allowed to copy the voluminous contents; when he and his son Serge Jr moved to Paris they undertook the gigantic task of reproducing the partially encoded manuscript in an intelligible form.Volume I covers the bulk of Prokofiev's years at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, ending with his triumphant graduation. Simultaneously attached to and exasperated by the traditions exemplified at this time by such famous men as Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Lyadov and Tcherepnin, the relentlessly brash young genius relishes the power of his talent to irritate, challenge and finally overcome the establishment, alongside unusually candid revelations of the all-too-normal preoccupations of a young man flexing his muscles in society.Taken as a whole, the diaries represent an inexhaustibly rich portrait of one of the most vibrant periods in the whole of Western art, peopled by virtually every musician and artist of note. They constitute both an indispensable and an entertaining source of reference for all scholars and lovers of Prokofiev's music.

These studies by an academic who is also a former practising lawyer seek to establish the principles of biblical law as represented in the Sinai traditions. Specific topics covered include adultery, family law, slavery, animals and wealth; respect for life and the general biblical moral tradition are also discussed. The collection also deals with wider issues of prophecy and law, the relationship of torah and mishpat (especially in relation to Second Isaiah), and laws in the book of Ruth, and includes a discussion of the place of biblical law in contemporary society.

The Passion of God provides a timely reminder in Lent that it is only by dying that we can live — only through death that resurrection lies. As the author says in the Preface 'Never has St Paul's commitment to the preaching of Christ Crucified been more urgent'. This collection of sermons given on special occasions is brought together to celebrate the complementary truths of the gospel — the joy in God's unimaginable love and the response that such love must evoke. May they give encouragement to all during the season of Lent, but at other times too.