Category: Biblical Studies
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What has Hollywood to do with Jerusalem?
Read more: What has Hollywood to do with Jerusalem?The early Church father Tertullian once asked a similar question to explore the connections between Christianity and Greek thought. This question is designed to explore a literary connection between how we watch movies and how we read the Bible. The issue here is how are we to interpret the Old Testament narratives? Are they history…
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Hospitality in Redemptive History
Read more: Hospitality in Redemptive History“I don’t know,” said Gavin, feet on the dash, brow furrowed in thought, “college students just aren’t that hospitable.” Driving away from a youth theater performance of Singin’ in the Rain, we exchanged reflections on home-finding, transience, and living on a micro-budget. While hospitality may slip by the wayside, students do a lot of other…
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Lent Meditation: The Suffering of Moses
Read more: Lent Meditation: The Suffering of Moses“Because of you,” spoke the old friend of God, trembling, holding back heavy tears as he looked out over a sea of remorseless faces, “Because of you,” he spoke, perhaps with frank shock and bewildered grief, “Because of you the LORD became angry with me.” (Deut. 1:27) . Moses These words are among the first…
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Joshua serves the Lord’s Supper in Numbers
Read more: Joshua serves the Lord’s Supper in NumbersWhat does it mean to participate in the Lord’s Supper faithfully? Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 10 highlight the central story of Numbers to teach a lesson. . That’s how the chapter opens: teaching us a lesson from Numbers. The lesson is negative: “They all ate the same spiritual food [as us] and drank the…
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Genesis 1-11: Rest for Anxious Souls
Read more: Genesis 1-11: Rest for Anxious SoulsOne morning, my brother Googled “Bible verses for anxiety.” Many of the people closest to him were being affected with crippling anxiety and he wanted to know how to help. 18% of American adults suffer from diagnosable anxiety disorders, and many more of us regularly experience anxiety of differing degrees and types. I want to…
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Top 5 Monographs on Galatians
Read more: Top 5 Monographs on GalatiansI am currently in the midst of that delightfully anti-climatic state of liminality that comes with submitting a PhD thesis. Of course, once you’re done with the thesis, you’re not actually done at all because you still have to defend it. And so, that means that I basically still need to be working on my…
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How Calvin helped me read the Bible
Read more: How Calvin helped me read the BibleThis fall I started rereading Calvin’s Institutes, which may be my favorite book. When I first seriously engaged with Calvin it was the most theologically formative book I had read (that may still be the case). Once while I was in a conversation with a Ladder Day Saint I quoted Calvin and was then asked…
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Jesus’ Death & Jesus Mythicism
Read more: Jesus’ Death & Jesus MythicismJesus Mythicism—have you ever heard of it? It’s the idea that Jesus never existed. If it sounds like rubbish to you, that’s because it is. Until a few months ago I had never actually heard someone defend the position. I simply assumed that Jesus Mythicists were merely online trolls who lived under the fantastical bridges…
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Reading Other Peoples’ Mail
Read more: Reading Other Peoples’ MailReturning from the mailbox, you flip through the stack that is your recent prize. You begin the important task of separating the pertinent letters from the ones that will be quickly discarded without even being read. Postcards and invitations in one stack, ads in another; bills, the things you wish you could throw away, on…
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“A Reconciled Community…of those Justly Condemned”
Read more: “A Reconciled Community…of those Justly Condemned”In his commentary on Amos, Hans Walter Wolff writes, …Amos with his message of judgement thrusts Israel back among the nations, there appears here a negative print of Pentecost. The wall between God’s people and the nations of the world is already being broken down. The Church will suffer damage if it does not allow…