This year has been a bit crazy. American politics are more than ever divided between the right and the left. Terrorism abroad and at home have people in fear and often their neighbors have become a source of that fear. Racial tensions are a powder keg of emotion and pain. It seems that there are divergent viewpoints on almost everything. In the theological world, pastors and scholars are under careful scrutiny for everything they do...
This past week has been tough. Orlando, Paris, Tel Aviv, and many others have been a constant source of tears, heartache and mourning for the global community I know for me, death has hit home in a different way. Last week, my Grandma passed away at 89 years old. She was an amazing woman who was first and foremost, a Christian. She loved Jesus in so many ways, and in every way she embodied a older...
**UPDATE, June 9, 2016. The California Senate Appropriations Committee struck down SB-1888 (proposed by Assemblyman Evan Low), which was the primary legislative bill focused in the article below. However, SB-1146 has been approved by the Appropriations Committee and is moving forward for a vote in the California Senate. SB-1146 was authored by Assemblyman Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), an active supporter of the LGBT community. Further clarity is needed, but it appears that the self-disclosure regulations of the...
Adam Kolman Marshak. The Many Faces of Herod the Great. Eerdmans, 2015. 400 pgs. $35 (Paperback). ISBN 978-0-8028-6605-9. In The Many Faces of Herod the Great, Adam Kolman Marshak offers a fresh and compelling historiographical account of one of the more misunderstood figures in antiquity. While he agrees that Herod does, at times, play the part of ruthless tyrant and political opportunist, Marshak contends that the monarch’s tactics of oppression and repression “cannot account for...
2015 was a strange year for the world. Historic court decisions in the US, riots and political uprisings throughout the world, Wars, terrorism, political civil wars, and terrible tragedies. It seems that the world as we know is crumbling around us. The new year didn’t bring anything that new, but simply a pause to our heated discussions over race, violence, politics, and our very way of life. And it seems that there is no hope...
Anathea E. Portier-Young. Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism. Eerdmans, 2014. 462 pgs. $35 (Paperback). ISBN 978-0-8028-7083-4. Anathea E. Portier-Young’s Apocalypse against Empire (originally release in 2011) comprises, to quote John Collins from the book’s foreword, “an important contribution to the study of Judea under Seleucid rule and to the social context of apocalyptic literature” (xiii). Winner of the 2013 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise, and now rereleased in a more...
Growing up my hometown was, and still is, very conservative. Most everyone identifies as a Christian and a Republican, and to me those two terms were nearly synonymous. I was taught that America was the greatest nation on the planet and that we were in fact a Christian nation, to suggest anything different would be tantamount to suggesting that bacon was not delicious, and only crazy people and liberals would suggest something like that. The...
Horsley, Richard and Tom Thatcher John, Jesus, and the Renewal of Israel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2013. 207 pages. Paperback. $20.00. In John, Jesus, and the Renewal of Israel, Thatcher and Horsley argue for a fresh reading of John’s Gospel. They contend that John presented Jesus as one whose ministry enacted Israel’s renewal in opposition to the Judean establishment and their Roman supporters. The larger goal of their work is to establish John as a valid source for Historical...
Brueggemann, Walter. Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2014. 165 pages. Softcover. Retail: $15.00. In Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks, Walter Brueggemann suggests that the ancient Israelite ideological crisis caused by the destruction of Jerusalem can act as an analogy for the modern American ideological crisis caused by 9/11 and that the prophetic response of ancient Israel should act as the pattern for the modern church’s response. This...
I just had the privilege of reading Aaron Koller’s new book on Esther which came out just a few weeks before mine (Esther and Her Elusive God). I would have liked to engage him in my book, but this brief review will have to suffice (for now). Aaron Koller, who is Associate Professor of Near Eastern and Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University in New York City, is the author of a new book on Esther, entitled, Esther in...
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