New Releases
The latest additions to the Berith Press bookstore.
Carefully & thoughtfully put together.
Sylvanus Stall’s What a Young Boy Ought to Know, first published in 1897, is a Christian guide to the questions of life, reproduction, bodily development, and sexual purity written especially for boys. Beginning with creation and the reproductive order in plants, animals, and mankind, Stall gradually introduces the origin of human life, the purpose of the reproductive organs, the dangers of sexual vice, the cultivation of purity in body and mind, healthy habits, and the changes accompanying puberty. His aim is to replace secrecy and corrupt instruction with frank, reverent, age-appropriate teaching rooted in Scripture, parental guidance, and the conviction that the body and its reproductive powers are gifts of God to be treated with honor. Presented as a series of simple conversations with a young boy, the book was designed either for children to read themselves or for parents to read with them, making it especially suited to families seeking an older Protestant approach to instruction in chastity, self-discipline, and preparation for Christian manhood. Its remarkable literary form also makes it something of a proto-audiobook: Stall presents the work as a succession of talks recorded upon phonograph cylinders for a young boy to hear each evening: an extraordinarily early conception of delivering a book through recorded speech.
6×9
Hardcover
418 pages
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Herman Witsius’s The Jew Becoming a Christian is a powerful defense of the Christian faith, and a polemic against Judaism. Working extensively from Scripture and from Judaic sources themselves, Witsius examines the authority of the Old and New Testaments, challenges the claims of the Oral Law, Talmud, and Kabbalah, and argues for Jesus Christ as Israel’s promised Messiah. A substantial accompanying dissertation explores traces of Trinitarian doctrine in the Targums, rabbinic writings, and Kabbalistic sources, while carefully distinguishing these unreliable witnesses from the full revelation given in Christ and his Apostles. The volume also includes studies on the divine authority of Scripture, the work of the Holy Spirit, conscience, and the excellence of evangelical truth. Herman Witsius was ordained to the ministry of the gospel in 1657. In 1698, he was appointed to the chair of theology at Leyden by William III. He authored such works as The Economy of the Covenants and his Irenical Animadversions, which dealt with antinomianism and neonomianism in England.
6×9
Hardcover with Dust Jacket
332 pages
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The Sinfulness of Onan & Onanism Considered Scripturally & Practically gathers more than three centuries of Christian theological, pastoral, and medical reflection on sexual purity, the sin of Onan, self-pollution, and the proper ends of marriage. Beginning with Scripture and historic Christian interpretation, the volume brings together selections from Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Luther, Calvin, Junius, Musculus, Pareus, Rivet, Bavinck, Kuyper, Geesink, and many others—much of it newly translated from Latin and Dutch by Jonathan Tomes and Alex Richey respectively. It also republishes the influential seventeenth-century Onania and substantial historical medical treatments by Samuel-Auguste Tissot and L. F. E. Bergeret. Together, these sources document a once widespread Christian understanding of chastity, masturbation, contraception, and the moral significance of the generative act.
6×9
Paperback
418 pages
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First published in 1604, with a second edition appearing in 1614, An Explanation of the Mosaic Judicial Laws examines whether, and to what extent, the judicial laws given through Moses have been abolished and what authority and use they retain under the New Testament. Zepper arranges the laws concerning persons, things, and actions according to the commandments of the Decalogue and draws from them instruction for ecclesiastical and civil officials in administering Christ’s kingdom in its ecclesiastical and civil dimensions. The result is both an exposition of biblical law and a comprehensive account of jurisprudence and Christian government. Wilhelm Zepper (1550–1607) was a German Reformed theologian, pastor, court preacher, church inspector, and professor of theology at Herborn. Throughout his ministry, he united theological learning with the practical work of ordering churches and schools.
6×9
Hardcover with Dust Jacket
724 pages
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We preserve the original words of the original authors, without censoriously and surreptitiously striking out content.