Way back, at the turn of the century, I wrote an article for Festschrift volume: Tim Bulkeley, “Where do you read.” in Mission without Christendom: exploring the site, essays for Brian Smith (Carey Studies in Theology) Auckland: Carey Baptist College, 13-22. Among other things it noted how the assumptions and cultural baggage we bring to [&hellip...
Usually I try to present the ideas in these podcasts so that anyone can understand. However, this time if you cannot read Scripture except in translation and you have not learned to use an interlinear or computer Bible to get beyond that handicap, this podcast may be less accessible. It deals with the naming of [&hellip...
In some Bible passages, as atheists and others who want to avoid the claims of God are quick to point out, God sounds like a Dalek. Deut 7:2 is a typical case. When the LORD your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties [&hellip...
Well,the end of the world has passed, again 🙂 That’s the second time this year! It is the Bible that causes all the problems. or rather it is bad reading of the Bible that causes all the problems. No book is more commonly misread than Revelation. Christians keep wanting it to predict tomorrow. And boy, [&hellip...
Sorry this podcast is firstly out of order (it should have come before the last confession 😉 and then late (it should also have come a while back but I’ve been busy trying to get a paper on Isaiah finished 🙁 This fourth confession illustrates strongly both the dramatic narrative character of these “confessions” and [&hellip...
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...
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...
