Here’s the third (I hope gripping) installment of this series on why the distinction between casuistic and apodictic matters beyond the form criticism of the legal corpora of the Pentateuch 😉 Apart from that one (corpora) no new “long words” this time, and that one is NOT in the podcast 😉 — with Gospel of [&hellip...
This is the video version of the second part of this three part series. (Part one, explained the difference between the two sorts of law.) Here I claim that the distinction helps us make sense of Jesus seemingly contradictory teaching about Old Testament law. I was a bit careless in narrating this one, note that [&hellip...
Here’s a video version of a podcast I did a while back, about one of the most dull-sounding topics in biblical studies 🙁 Yet distinguishing these two (whether or not you remember the names) is vital to understanding the New Testament! Tomorrow I’ll explain why 🙂...
My tradition (the Baptist part of the Nonconformist or radical Reformation) has stressed the idea that Scripture is perspicuous, that the Bible is easy to understand, and that anyone can understand it – or at least grasp its essentials – without special training or equipment. Yet there are for sure some difficult passages. There are [&hellip...
Following the Twisted Tales of the book of Judges (in the Hebrew Bible) comes Samuel. The opening of Samuel responds well to the questions posed by the horrid stories that ended Judges...
Huffington Post article claiming the pais was the centurion’s sex partner produced a little flurry of posts and comment on the biblical blogs. Gavin at Otagosh in Jesus and the Centurion’s boy wrote: “I’m not sure the story actually has much value in terms of current debates on homosexuality.” Is that right? ...
Like all good stories, and the Bible is before and after everything else a story, Scripture begins at the beginning. The beginning of everything, and a garden planted by God. Everything falls apart, for humans fall apart, and many of the stories in Scripture are horrible, grotesque or inspiring, for such a mixture describes the [&hellip...
In this podcast I’ll introduce the idea of the ending of John as a sphragis, and very briefly mention what that might mean for reading John’s gospel, but most of the time will be spent on the much less technical question of why I am convinced that Jesus rose from death and met with the [&hellip...
This chapter gives what it tells us is an eyewitness account of a Roman execution. Jesus, who has done no real wrong, except offend the religious leaders, and worry the politicians is subjested to the casual brutality of an imperial production-line death. Such a death, of an innocent man, is shocking. But Jesus was not [&hellip...
In this chapter, we get the climax of John’s series of sayings where Jesus echoes the divine “I am” cf. Exodus 3 (E100-17: Exodus 3-4: Getting the holy between your toes!), and we also notice how amid powerful people who seem muddled and out of control, Jesus (the one who seems to be the victim) [&hellip...
