Spotting the exaggerations and humour in the book can help us understand, but it also acts as a warning!...
Obadiah’s not a comedy. It is nasty, brutish though thankfully short. It is harder than usual to talk about this book as Israeli defense forces continue to rain destruction on Gaza though perhaps the placing of the book of Obadiah and my trip (starting Wednesday) to what was till recently war-torn Sri Lanka provide glimpses [&hellip...
You cow! Is neither clever, nor funny, in today’s world. So why do I think Amos 4:1 was intended to be funny? Listen to find out 🙂 There is a post with more detail on this verse on my blog here: The works referred to in this podcast were: King, Philip J. Amos, Hosea, Micah: [&hellip...
This is the first part of a short series (it might only be two parts, who knows 😉 on passages where God exegetes his own words. In this part we’ll look at 2 Samuel 7, where David wants to build a ‘house’ = temple for God, since he already has a nice ‘house’ = palace [&hellip...
“…the more I have read and studied Scripture over the decades the more I become aware that the writers were more often sharp-tongued trouble makers with a biting sense of humour than they were safe moralisers like the LXX translators The Ltalians have a saying: “Traduttore, traditore.” about how translators often betray their text. [&hellip...
The book of Esther tells a terrible story, of attempted genocide averted. Too often Christian readers miss the humour in the story, of course some of it is sex related, and/or poking fun at gender expectations, so perhaps there are reasons for the blindness. ...
Here’s a second instalment of Saul’s introduction… if when you are listening you have a Bible handy, open it to 1 Sam 9:11ff. [NB the screencast below includes both parts. Unlike the audio which sticks to the 5 minute format...
