First Fruits Press
First Fruits Press is an open access academic publishing arm of Asbury Theological Seminary situated in the B.L. Fisher Library. It is based on Exodus 23:19, in which the Israelites were commanded to, “Bring the best of the first fruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.” Asbury Seminary desires to offer back to God the first fruits of its labors, which in our case is academic scholarly writing, by making material freely available in digital form to the entire world.
All of our material is freely available in its electronic format. If someone wishes to purchase a print copy, we charge the cost of paper and binding from our print-on-demand supplier to help keep costs as low as possible. Print copies can be ordered from our website or from Amazon.
There are three primary goals of First Fruits Press:
1. To preserve and promote Wesleyan Holiness material globally by digitizing it and making it freely available for believers in every corner of the world.
2. To assist faculty in producing material, especially low cost material for students.
3. To produce new academic or scholarly works, on our own or through partnerships.
Publications - Journals
The Asbury Journal publishes scholarly essays and book reviews written from a Wesleyan perspective. The Journal's authors and audience reflect the global reality of the Christian church, the holistic nature of Wesleyan thought, and the importance of both theory and practice in addressing the current issues of the day. Authors include Wesleyan scholars, scholars of Wesleyanism/Methodism, and scholars writing on issues of theological and theological education importance.
Journal of Inductive Biblical Studies
The Journal of Inductive Biblical Studies intends to promote the hermeneutical approach to the study of the Scriptures generally known as Inductive Biblical Studies. By Inductive Biblical Study (IBS) we mean the hermeneutical movement initiated by William Rainey Harper and Wilbert Webster White that was embodied in the curriculum of The Biblical Seminary in New York founded in 1900. For more detailed description of IBS, see Bauer and Traina, Inductive Bible Study: A Comprehensive Guide to the Practice of Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011).
