Daniel J. Harrington, SJ - Böcker

Do Catholics really read the Bible? If so, how do they read it and is there anything unique about their approach? What role does the Bible play in Catholic life, teaching, and culture? As a leading Scripture scholar who also teaches students and preaches to everyday people, Fr. Daniel Harrington, S.J., has made it his life's mission to answer these and many related questions about the Bible and its relationship to Catholic life. Accessibly written, How Do Catholics Read the Bible? blends biblical scholarship with compelling personal anecdotes to equip readers with the tools they need to more fully engage Scripture and the Catholic tradition. With chapters on how the Catholic canon came to be, what the Church teaches about the Bible, appropriate methods for analyzing Scripture passages, and how to incorporate the Bible into everyday life, this book is ideal for individual or group use in parishes and classrooms. Each chapter concludes with questions for reflection and recommendations for further reading.

In Paul and Virtue Ethics, Daniel Harrington and James Keenan build upon their successful collaboration Jesus and Virtue Ethics to discuss the apostle Paul's teachings as a guide to interpret theology and ethics today. Examining Paul's writings, the authors investigate what they teach about the basic questions of virtue ethics: Who am I? Who do I want to become? And how do I get there? Their intent is not to provide stringent rules, but to awaken discovery and encourage dialogue. The book first considers the concept of virtue ethics, an approach to ethics that emphasizes moral character, and Paul's ethics in particular. Next, the authors focus on the virtues of faith, love/charity, and hope as treated by Paul and Thomas Aquinas. Closing the book with reflections on the roles of other virtues (and vices) in individual and communal Christian life, the authors discuss various issues in social ethics and sexual morality as they are dealt with in Paul and in Christian virtue ethics today.

Jesus of Nazareth is arguably the most famous and influential human being who has ever lived on earth. In the Historical Dictionary of Jesus, author Daniel J. Harrington delves into the ancient literary sources about Jesus, modern methods of approaching these sources, the major events in Jesus' life, persons and places associated with him, the form and content of his teachings, what can be said about his death and the claim that he was raised from the dead, and the contributions of major modern scholars to the quest of the historical Jesus.The book consists of three parts: an introduction to the major topics pertaining to Jesus as a historical figure; a cross-referenced dictionary containing 400 entries on a range of topics, including things Jesus did and said, ancient sources of historical data, and modern scholarship and interpretation; and a bibliography listing some of the most important books related to Jesus and the world in which he lived. This concise and objective reference work provides a clear and accurate introduction to the study of Jesus as a historical figure.

These accounts of the Maccabean revolt, by which the sons of Mattathias reclaimed the temple of Jerusalem, tell an important story of the founding of the Jewish people. "The Hammerers" is the meaning of the nickname "Maccabees," given to Mattathias's sons, who lived in a time of revolution. Empires struggled for control of Greece, Egypt, and Asia, and the small population of Jews tried to preserve their claim to Judea. The five brothers also made heroic contributions to the practice of Judaism. Their rededication of the temple establishes the annual celebration of Hanukkah, and the martyr stories in Second Maccabees emphasize faithfulness to the law of Moses.The books of First and Second Maccabees are also important for Christians, as in them is told how the Jewish people established the political and religious culture into which Jesus was born. The martyr stories inform the early Christian martyrdoms, and the books are written in Greek, the language in which the Jews of Jesus' time read the Scriptures. As Father Harrington notes, without the Maccabees "the fate of Judaism (and with it Christianity and Islam) was uncertain."

In this follow-up to his popular book What Are We Hoping For? New Testament Images, Daniel J. Harrington extends his reflections on hope in the Scriptures. He draws us into the striking images of the psalms—the mountain, the sun, refuge, the kingdom, sheltering wings, the olive tree, and the shepherd—to lead us to the discovery that hope is the predominant image of the book of Psalms. Even in their darkest laments, the psalmists remind us that God hears us and will never abandon us.In these brief essays, Harrington opens up the language of forty psalms, explores their literary and historical context, and then ties the psalm to our reading as Christians whose ultimate hope is in Jesus Christ. As we read and reflect on the psalms with Harrington’s guidance, we call to mind the ways we experience God and our hopes, both daily and for all time. Drawn into the world of the psalmist and discovering how our experiences often mirror theirs, we too will express our hope in God’s love and mercy and in the coming of God’s kingdom.

This introduction to New Testament exegesis helps readers by explaining in a simple and brief way the basic literary methods used in studying the New Testament today: textual criticism, translations, words and motifs, source criticism, form criticism, historical criticism, redaction criticism, and parallels. It is a beginner's book, designed to make explicit some of the procedures now used by the commentators who have had formal exegetical training.

Questions of vocation and character formation become important to students as they continue to receive higher education. Jesus Ben Sira combines secular wisdom from Near Eastern wisdom sources and divine revelations from the Hebrew Bible to create the Book of Sirach. By applying form criticism to Ben Sira's book, Daniel J. Harrington provides students with historical information of the psychological and sociological context underlying Ben Sira's teachings, as well as an understanding of how Ben Sira's ancient wisdom can contribute to personal and social formation in the 21st century.Chapters include Ben Sira and His Book, Ben Sira and Other Wisdom Books, Reading Ben Sira's Book, Ben Sira's Ways of Teaching, Ben Sira's Social World, Ben Sira's Abiding Wisdom, as well as references, suggestions for further study, and an index.Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., Ph.D., is a professor of New Testament at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has written numerous scholarly works, including Paul on the Mystery of Israel, The Gospel of Matthew, and The Gospel According to Matthew published by the Liturgical Press.This book is part of the series Interfaces.

This introduction to Old Testament exegesis responds to the directives of the Second Vatican Council that instructs biblical interpreters to investigate the meaning the sacred writers intended to express. Thus it acquaints readers with an introduction to the methods commonly used in biblical scholarship today.

Matthew wrote his Gospel from his perspective as a Jew. It is with sensitivity to this perspective that Father Harrington undertakes this commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.After an introduction, he provides a literal translation of each section in Matthew's Gospel and explains the textual problems, philological difficulties, and other matters in the notes. He then presents a literary analysis of each text (content, form, use of sources, structure), examines the text against its Jewish background, situates it in the context of Matthew's debate with other first-century Jews, and reflects on its significance for Christian theology and Christian-Jewish relations. Bibliographies direct the reader to other important modern studies.

Matthew wrote his Gospel from his perspective as a Jew. It is with sensitivity to this perspective that Father Harrington undertakes this commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.After an introduction, he provides a literal translation of each section in Matthew's Gospel and explains the textual problems, philological difficulties, and other matters in the notes. He then presents a literary analysis of each text (content, form, use of sources, structure), examines the text against its Jewish background, situates it in the context of Matthew's debate with other first-century Jews, and reflects on its significance for Christian theology and Christian-Jewish relations. Bibliographies direct the reader to other important modern studies.

In The Gospel of Mark Fathers Donahue and Harrington use an approach that can be expressed by two terms currently used in literary criticism: intratextuality and intertextuality. This intratextual and intertextual reading of Mark's Gospel helps us to appreciate the literary character, its setting in life, and its distinctive approaches to the Old Testament, Jesus, and early Christian theology. "Intratextuality" means we read Mark as Mark and by Mark. Such a reading expresses interest in the final form of the Gospel (not its source or literary history) and in its words and images, literary devices, literary forms, structures, characterization, and plot. Reading Mark by Mark gives particular attention to the distinctive vocabulary and themes that run throughout the Gospel and serve to hold it together as a unified literary production. "Intertextuality" comprises the relation between texts and a textual tradition, and also referring to contextual materials not usually classified as texts (e.g., archaeological data). "Intertextuality" is used to note the links of the text of Mark's Gospel to other texts (especially the Old Testament) and to the life of the Markan community and of the Christian community today.

Crisis in the church is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the church has always been - and probably always will be - involved in some kind of crisis. Even in the apostolic period, which is regarded by many as the church's golden age, there were serious crises coming both from the outside, as in 1 Peter, and from the inside, as in Jude and 2 Peter. The three short New Testament letters treated in 1 Peter, Jude and 2 Peter illustrate the problems early Christians faced, as well as the rhetorical techniques and theological concepts with which they combated those problems.In the first part of this volume, Donald Senior views 1 Peter as written from Rome in Peter's name to several churches in northern Asia Minor - present-day Turkey - in the latter part of the first century C.E. The new Christians addressed in 1 Peter found themselves aliens and exiles in the wider Greco-Roman society and suffered a kind of social ostracism. But they are given a marvelous theological Vision of who they have become through their baptism and pastoral encouragement to stand firm. They are shown how to take a missionary stance toward the outside world by giving the witness of a holy and blameless life to offset the slander and ignorance of the non-Christian majority and possibly even to lead them to glorify God on the day of judgment.In the second part of this volume, Daniel Harrington interprets Jude and 2 Peter as confronting crises in the late first century that were perpetrated by Christian teachers who are described polemically as intruders in Jude and as false teachers in 2 Peter. In confronting the crises within their churches, the authors appeal frequently to the Old Testament and to early summaries of Christian faith. While Jude uses other Jewish traditions, 2 Peter includes most of the text of Jude as well as many distinctively Greek terms and concepts. It is clear that for the authors, despite their different social settings, what was at stake was the struggle for the faith.Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, is a professor of New Testament at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and general editor of New Testament Abstracts. He is a past-president of the Catholic Biblical Association of American and the editor of the Sacra Pagina series. He also wrote The Gospel of Matthew in the Sacra Pagina series.Donald Senior, CP, is a professor of New Testament studies and president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He was recently appointed by Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Biblical Commission. General editor of The Bible Today, he also co-edited The Collegeville Pastoral Dictionary of the Bible and the 22-volume international commentary series New Testament Message, and he wrote the four-volume The Passion series published by The Liturgical Press.