“Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.” – St. Augustine
Since I’ve built up a large collection of extra books and resources, each week I give some away absolutely free, no strings attached.
Each giveaway lasts seven days with a new one beginning every Friday and you can enter any time during the week. Check out my past giveaways here.
Thanks to my good friends at Image Books, today I’m giving away FIVE copies of Dr. Scott Hahn’s newest book, Consuming the Word: The New Testament and the Eucharist in the Early Church (Image, 2013).
Here’s a snippet from my review yesterday:
Consuming the Word: The New Testament and The Eucharist in the Early Church
by Dr. Scott Hahn
Image, 176 pages, hardcover
Released on May 28, 2013
If you walked into a first-century church and asked to see a copy of the New Testament, you’d get a bunch of confused looks. What do you mean a copy? The Bible didn’t exist yet. For the early Christians, “New Testament” was a sacramental phrase. It wasn’t a book; it was the Eucharist.
In Consuming the Word: The New Testament and the Eucharist in the Early Church (Image, 2013), renowned scholar Dr. Scott Hahn explains that for the biblical writers, the words “testament” and “covenant” were interchangeable. Both the Greek word for “testament” (diatheke) and the Hebrew equivalent (b’rith) are most accurately rendered in English as “covenant.” Therefore when Jesus offered a cup of wine to his disciples at the Last Supper, saying “this cup is the new covenant [he kaine diatheke] in my blood” (1 Corinthians 11:25), the Jews would have understood him to say, “this cup is the new testament in my blood.” Thus the New Testament was a sacrament at least a generation before it was a document.
But why is that important? It reveals the deep connection between the New Testament books and the New Covenant liturgy. These biblical documents were intended to be proclaimed within the context of the sacrament. Unlike many Protestants, who focus exclusively on the Scriptures, Catholics dine at two tables. As Pope John Paul II described them, “one of the Word of God, the other of the Eucharist. The work that we take on ourselves consists in approaching these two tables in order to be filled.”
Read the rest of the review.
I’m using Rafflecopter to help with the giveaway, which is cool because it allows you multiple entries for commenting, posting on Facebook, sharing on Twitter, etc. Click below to enter:
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The winner(s) will be randomly selected next Friday and the books will be sent out, free of charge, shortly thereafter.
In the future I’ll be giving away more books and resources, sometimes multiple items per giveaway! So subscribe via feed reader or email to ensure you never miss your chance to win.
(Since I’m covering the shipping costs, only residents within the continental United States are eligible to win.)