At the SBL conference last week one of the plenary speakers presented a paper on the dangers of pseudo-historicism in academia. In attempting to provide a “proper historical context” for various biblical passages, he argued that many in his field do not practice sound historical methods. There was much merit in his comments, and many in the evangelical community would have done well to listen to what he had to say. Yet, while I wholeheartedly agree that sound practices and methods must be used in seeking a historical context, sometimes (read: nearly all the time) that context either obscures or disintegrates what valuable work the final editor of a biblical book had done. In other words, we must view the work of the final author of a book as a historical event in making a text. The final book transcends what may have been a prehistory for a text. It is one thing to use linguistic evidence to date a book of the bible (or a passage) to a certain time period, and it is yet another thing to use that for interpretation of the text in its final form. Read more... (337 words, estimated 1:21 mins reading time)
I was reading through Kings recently and found this text, which I thought was quite interesting for our understanding of how Scripture outside the Torah may have been authoritative for the ancient Israelites. The text is from 2 Kings 17.9-13, and it appears in the context of the exile of Israel in the ninth year of Hoshea because of their idolatry: Read more... (257 words, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)
For those of you who know me well, you are well aware of the change in my understanding of the Bible which took place after being introduced to the work of John Sailhamer. His scholarship and insight into the meaning, significance, and the technique of observing (seeing) the text has transformed (a better word may be revolutionized) my understanding of Jesus, the Gospel, and the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Since that transformation in the summer of 2006, I’ve spent a great deal of time trying to grasp the big picture of the Old Testament: what is this huge chunk of my Bible all about that I’ve for so many years misunderstood and neglected? Through much labor and energy in reading through the text and commentaries, as well as growing to love the Hebrew language, I’ve come to discover a Christianity – nay, a Messiah - far richer and meaningful than I could have ever imagined. Having graduated with two degrees from seminary, I’ve come to a place of transition where I’m finding a lot of free time. I’m also finding myself teaching Sunday School within a Bible-believing, God-fearing, Christ-centered church. In that place, the New Testament is the dominant part of the Bible being taught, which is quite understandable. I’m finding myself returning to the New Testament texts with quite a different standpoint, with a strong passion to re-read those texts which I love so much, the book of Hebrews, Ephesians, Romans, Matthew. As I prepared for a Sunday school lesson on Hebrews 5 this week, I got caught up in it all. I decided to post here the first half of the class which I’m planning to teach tomorrow morning. I hope it causes you to think, but more importantly I hope it causes you to understand the book of Hebrews from a different point-of-view. Read more... (1957 words, estimated 7:50 mins reading time)
I’ve always wondered why these three wisdom books are found in this order in the Hebrew manuscripts: Psalms, Job, Proverbs. As of late, I have been studying some introductory material on the book of Proverbs, and I came across this quote from Brueggemann that got me thinking,
“There is a divine ordering of creation that must be honored. That divine ordering, however, is not easy or obvious. Its observation requires attentiveness, discernment, and a right orientation in order to perceive. Thus right discernment of life begins with an obedient discernment of YHWH the Creator” (An Introduction to the Old Testament, 309).
Read more... (759 words, estimated 3:02 mins reading time)
I just finished reading through the book of Acts, which I had not read the whole way through in a little while. One part of that book which struck me, something I had never noticed before, was in 26:4-8. Throughout the book of Acts, the apostle Paul gives his testimony a few times. Here, he is giving it to King Agrippa. In it he said something I found quite interesting about the Sinai covenant, and the cultic worship in ancient Israel. Here’s what the passage says: Read more... (2792 words, estimated 11:10 mins reading time)
This summer, a friend of mine and I began working through the Book of the Twelve (often called “the Minor Prophets” in our churches). What we have been discovering is that this book is not too minor at all. I call it ”a book” because historically these twelve prophetic books have always been together. In fact, in the Hebrew Bible, they are to be read as a single unit. In this way, the twelve books act more like twelve chapters than books.
Beginning at that point, we set out to figure out the message of each book in the hope to put together a simple commentary not only on each book, but on the shape, structure, and meaning of the Twelve as a unit. Read more... (1628 words, estimated 6:31 mins reading time)
This summer I am on a mission – to attempt to figure out why the four Gospels were put in the order they have been in the NT. In other words, when the early church put together the canon, why did they organize it as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Some theological shifting seems to have taken place since Luke has been split up from Acts. Why did the early church want us to read the Bible in that order (Luke, John, Acts)? This question stems within a series of broader questions involving why and how the structure and organization of the books within the Bible draws out more clearly authorial intent and theological concepts. If it does, then Maurice Robinson’s brief note about canonical order in his Byzantine Textform 2005 is important (xvi-xvii): Read more... (1681 words, estimated 6:43 mins reading time)
In a day when many conservative evangelical scholars are recommending that Christians should not employ the same hermeneutics as the Biblical writers themselves, I am thankful for early church Fathers who do recommend it. The early church (with men like Ignatius and Irenaeus in mind) did not think about the New Testament as an historical document that records the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, but instead viewed it as a theological reflection of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. You see, for them, the Jesus who saves man was Jesus Christ. By putting that word Christ in Jesus’ name, the New Testament writers were making a theological and exegetical statement about who Jesus was — the Messiah of the Hebrew Bible. In presenting Jesus in the Gospels, and by proving the Gospel using the OT in the epistles, the New Testament writers relied heavily on what they thought was proper exegesis of the Old Testament. In fact, when you get to the time of Irenaeus, it was argued specifically that the New Testament was the only legitimate exegesis of the Old Testament. Any other interpretation of it was improper and skewed one’s view of Jesus Christ. Read more... (1439 words, estimated 5:45 mins reading time)
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