Scripture

The slave’s testimony, or, an unintended exegetical confusion

June 14, 2010

I tend to think that one of the most common mistakes people make in reading Scripture is to move far too quickly to interpreting one passage by another. It is too easy to read John into Paul, or Paul into Luke, in such a way that we miss some of the point of each, and [...]

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Strange Scriptures: Israel, Palestine and a genocidal God

June 3, 2010

I don’t really know what I want to say in this post. But this week it has been extremely uncomfortable watching and listening to the news of Israel’s raid on the Gaza would-be blockade-busting convoy, while at the same time reading through some of the bloodier passages in the book of Joshua, retailing the Israelite [...]

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The Bible in the Life of the Church

June 2, 2010

The Bible in the Life of the Church is the name of a worldwide project exploring how Anglicans read the Bible. It’s been set up as a positive thing in itself, but also to try and find a new way to help address some of our chronic disagreements. There’s a small site on Blogger for [...]

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Why Wright’s resurrection seems wrong to me

May 25, 2010

In a post yesterday, Daniel Kirk raised a question about Tom Wright’s views on the afterlife. Is “resurrection” for a Christian what we experience/are led into immediately after our death (life after death)? Or is it, instead, something that the dead in Christ await, something that will be consummated on a final day of judgment [...]

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Thomas and the synoptics: variant sayings and historical judgment

May 23, 2010

Judy Redman makes a good point in defending April DeConick from Perrin’s criticism regarding the Gospel of Thomas: It would seem to me, though, that if Jesus went to place A where they were doing X (which was wrong) he would have taught against X there. If he visited place B where they were also [...]

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Martyrdom as a way of understanding a suffering Messiah?

May 7, 2010

I sometimes find that a particular phrase in something I’m reading can sometimes simply stop me in my tracks and make me ponder. I had that experience recently with a chapter title in Mike Bird‘s generally excellent little book on Jesus’ messianic self-understanding. One of his section headings is “Crucified Messiah, not Crucified Martyr” (p148). [...]

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The Jeremias hangover and the popularity of questionable exegesis

April 14, 2010

I listened to a talk tonight that had a great deal of practical and pastoral wisdom in it, and a lot to inspire people. Unfortunately, in my view, much of it was presented as the clear and undisputed meaning of the biblical text of the evening, which was Luke 15:1-7. Jeremias’ work has got into [...]

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McKnight vs Wright: Jesus, the harmonies and the histories.

April 13, 2010

There’s an interesting argument of sorts going on between Scot McKnight on the one hand, and Tom Wright, Darrell Bock and Craig Keener on the other. Here’s McKnight’s original article; here are Wright’s, Keener’s and Bock’s replies; here’s McKnight’s rejoinder to the three of them. All are worth reading. One of the interesting things about [...]

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Giving fundamentalism no quarter in the battle for the Bible

April 11, 2010

I confess to being confused by John Hobbins. He gives one of the better round-ups of comments on what he calls the scandal (an accurate description) of Bruce Waltke’s “resignation” for mentioning evolution in the wrong company. Yet Hobbins also says in that latter post: Note the “if,” [as in "if the data is overwhelmingly [...]

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The cup Jesus drinks: wrath or suffering?

April 1, 2010

This evening’s preacher made an identification I’d first heard on the lips of Tom Wright, between the cup of God’s wrath (Psalm 75:8, Isa 51:17, Jer 25:15, Rev 14:10 inter alia), and the cup Jesus prays might pass from him (Matt 26:39, Mark 14:36, Luke 22:42 and compare John 18:11). Wright went on to “prove” [...]

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