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...
Often in biblical narrative things “just seem to happen”, rather like they do in our lives 😉 But are such “happenings” chance or divine providence at work? We’ll try to decide, using Gen 37:12ff. (read with Gen 39) and Ruth 2 as examples. ...
Bonhoeffer has some hugely stimulating ideas in his discussion of the “fall” story in Genesis 3. Probably none are more stimulating, or easy to fail to grasp as his thought about “conscience” – at least difficult for people for whom the idea that conscience is the “voice of God within” is deeply embedded, since Bonhoeffer [&hellip...
Here’s what I would have said if they had asked me about the Bible! (Not 5 minutes but 6, but it is a big topic 😉 and here are the usual downloadable links 🙂 ...
In this post I’ll start looking at how we respond to the Bible’s silences, often there are questions we want to ask the Bible, which the Bible does not answer. What do we do then? Some of these questions, like the one I start with produce classic biblical puzzlers… By the way, if the sound [&hellip...
Like soap-operas, and other serials, biblical narratives with several episodes often seek to bridge between two parts. These bridges are often verses that serve to link one episode to another. We’ll look at examples from Ruth, Jonah and Genesis 2-...
Typescene sounds like a typical technical term scholars use make Bible stories dull 🙁 In this podcast I hope to show you it’s exactly the opposite and that by spending 5 minutes learning about typescenes you can discover a livelyness you may have missed, even in a well-loved story like Ruth. (Other passage you should [&hellip...
This podcast takes a second look at Babel, with a focus on the structure of the story, and its themes. It includes “homework” for which you should ideally have a photocopy of Genesis 11:1-9 (preferably in a fairly literal translation like NRSV, RSV, TNIV, NIV, ESV…) and some coloured markers or crayons...
Stephen suggested I do a ‘cast about the Babel story, so here it is… a first ‘cast about Babel. In this one I’ll begin with points of view and language. Since this will have to be a series we’ll follow up from there later! For more about “point of view” and “frames” you could see [&hellip...
Eric Auerbach’s famous quote about Biblical Narrative being “fraught with background” can sound puzzling. Here I’ll try to explain it with reference to some trivial but intriguing details in Genesis 24. Reading the chapter in the Hebrew class we spotted several minor details in the telling that suggest, or hint… well, listen and find out [&hellip...
