Perhaps no Bible text illustrates the dangers of a simplistic reading of Scripture than 1 Cor 14:34. If we tear this verse from its cotext, (( Or for a podcast. )) and then read it as if the Bible were “God’s instruction manual for life” and even worse read it also literally then we are [&hellip...
Here’s an old post, with now a screencast format and somewhat cleaned up audio. I briefly remind you of some of the passages that picture God as a midwife. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) regularly pictures Yahweh as intimately associated with forming in the womb and with birthing. In view of “his” role as midwife [&hellip...
Here’s a short screencast to show how STEP Bible can help you see how the word “see” steps us through 1 Samuel ...
Sunday School, and most of our quick summaries of the contents of the Bible present Exodus as telling the story of how God frees Israelite slaves from the powers of Egypt. But, a closer look at the book shows that’s just half the story! Here we’ll focus Exodus as a book in two halfs. Doing [&hellip...
There probably is no other book of the Bible that has so much nonsense taught and preached “from” it. So I will use two five minute slots to introduce this “difficult” book. In this session I’ll talk about how NOT to read Revelation and begin to point to a better way. Then in the next [&hellip...
Just four chapters, here’s a story without violence or even conflict, a simple everyday tale of country folk, yet Ruth grips hearers is loved by everyone and carries profound theological messages, that echo into the books before and after Ruth in the Christian Bible...
Ezra is far from the funniest book in the Bible, or the easiest read. Yet even here there are hints and traces of that most human of phenomena, humour. In Ezra 3:12-13 (as often) one either has to laugh or cry. Throughout the book something funny is going on with language and translation (see e.g. [&hellip...
My earlier podcast: The last Confession of Jeremiah: Jeremiah 20: Yahweh seduces his prophet I simply assumed the translation seduce” for patah But “seduce” is not a translation favoured by English translations. I dealt with this issue briefly in a blog post Did Yahweh seduce Jeremiah? with a bibliographic note Did God seduce Jeremiah? Addendum [&hellip...
Jeremiah gets more personal in his complaints, but his “conversation” with YHWH still seems to shut out any response… curiouser and curiouser… and which ending will you choose of this series? This screencast is part of a series on the “Confessions of Jeremiah” you can watch the rest here...
The strange, and strangely disturbing story of Micaiah ben Imlah in 2 Chronicles 18 which repeats very closely its source in 1 Kings 22 ((Which may mean this entry is cheating in terms of finding humour in every book of the (Hebrew) Bible, though it does seem to show that the Chronicles was not so [&hellip...
