YouTube:
My post is very late, so I expect I won’t have a live audience tonight at all (they’re always very small), but still I need to provide the link for those who watch later. There will be some interesting connections tonight with my discussion with Steve Kindle (and his book I’m Right and You’re Wrong) on the video below:
Some very interesting points. It’s only fair that Herold Weiss, whose book Creation in Scripture I publish, would disagree with some of John Walton’s views, while affirming the broader ideas about how to read an ancient text. (HT: Allan R. Bevere)
On the Energion Hangout tonight at 7:00 PM central time, we’ll be discussing the topic of violence in the Bible, with a particular emphasis on the Old Testament. But as participant Dr. Alden Thompson will doubtless remind us tonight, there’s violence in the New Testament as well. Alden Thompson is author of the very first…
A good discussion, especially of the aorist adverbial participle followed by an imperative.
Ben Witherington comments on an attitude of skepticism on his blog in an entry titled Justification by Doubt. Dr. Witherington makes a number of good points, but I think the topic at a minimum needs more comment. I’d like to suggest you read his entire post before you read mine. I’m going to quote his…
I took a detour from working through 2 Corinthians with the Anchor Bible commentary and read Frederick W. Danker’s volume II Corinthians in the Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament series. This is a 214 page commentary, but has more content than you might expect because it doesn’t include the Biblical text along with the…
This was one of my texts from yesterday, though we worked from Titus 3:3-11, where I think vs. 3-8 parallels chapter 36 quite nicely. But my interest today is not in a specific verse, but rather in the way in which Israel’s story is told. Christians often have ambivalent, if not downright negative, feelings about…
I’m wondering if you’ve contemplated, in aid of understanding Ezekiel’s vision, doing a formal Ignatian Visualisatory prayer on the passage? I’ve contemplated this, following listening to you, and the first thing which occurs to me is not to attempt it without a spiritual director, preferably one immediately to hand. Ignatian prayer I find to be an extremely powerful technique, and it has on occasion resulted in a tactile apparition. That is not too much of a problem with most of the gospel passages which are commonly used, but could be rather more exciting than I’d prefer with this kind of graphic vision passage.
I hadn’t contemplated such an activity, and even was momentarily stumped by the name. I think you’re much more familiar with spiritual practices than I am. I came to this point through a very intellectual approach. Even my discussion of the vision state started with an observation about someone else’s supposed state, and not something I knew from experience.
Ezekiel 1 was, however, somewhat of a turning point for me, and has led to where I would say I take an initially intellectual approach but now seasoned by more mystical experience. Oddly, I find myself much more able to communicate with those whose experience could be described as mystical.
And this comment itself, I think, shows my tendency to describe the swimming pool and the process of swimming rather than jumping in the water! 🙂