For the second part of this “A text without contexts is dumb” series we’ll think about cotext, the text that surrounds a text, providing context. The biblical examples come from Psalms and Ephesians. You might want to listen to Part 1 here first 😉 ...
What does it mean to “believe”? Can Alice in Wonderland help us avoid a common Evangelical error? And does “it’s in the Bible” end conversation about the “Canaanite genocide”? (( The scare quotes round Canaanite genocide indicate my question, still as far as I am concerned unanswered whether such an “event” occurred, or even was [&hellip...
Gapping, where hearers have to “fill in” information that is missing in the text, is a really significant part of biblical story-telling. So, I’ll need to introduce the idea to next year’s Biblical Narrative class. Normally we “gap” unconsciously, and not just when reading narratives as I hope I’ll show you in this podcast. We’ll [&hellip...
This post is a follow-up to the previous one, addressing submission in 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 3:1 calls wives to -submit- to their husbands. What does it call husbands to do? Do our common English translations mislead us? Was Peter more revolutionary than we thought? In addressing this question, as well as a look [&hellip...
“Head” is often used as picture language. Because such language is always deeply cultural and even personal it is vital to think about what someone else means when they say head – unless it clearly is just the lump that keeps one’s neck from fraying. Paul’s usage is particularly interesting and has more to do [&hellip...
The Sydney Anglicans are suggesting women might want to promise to -submit- to their husbands. I argue that they are not being biblical enough, and don’t go half far enough! I begin with Martyn Lloyd-Jones fine introduction to reading Ephesians 5 and suggest where half-hearted, partial readings go wrong. I’ll follow this up with a [&hellip...
This post is not itself directly about the Bible, though it is thoroughly “biblical” as I’ll be happy to demonstrate if you ask targeted questions 😉 In the podcast I’ll take a pagan suggestion from the Sidney Anglicans, and a scathing critique of the churches (from Stanley Hauerwas) (( Via Bacho as the original Hauerwas [&hellip...
Marking is a great stimulus for ideas for these podcasts. I thought I do a short series telling how the five step process works using one of our “test” passages. This first one is just step one, I’ll do the others later&#...
In part one I drew attention to the problem that this verse seems to contradict what Paul himself approves and to some funny things going on in and around the verse. Here I’ll focus on my reason for mentioning this, how we should respond when a Bible passage seems to contradict what the [&hellip...
Beware this reading is dangerous! After readings from Peter and then James, the E100 gives us another reading from one of the less Greek of the NT writers. Like James John circles round his topic and returns to the same “place” (though having moved forward). John is (at least if you have a poetic cell [&hellip...
