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Sorrow Like My Sorrow – Lamentations 1:12
Can we really understand the suffering of another person or they ours?
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What Is Biblical Literacy?
We complain about it, write about it, claim it’s important or even critical, design programs to create it, but what is it? I don’t mean that none of us know what we mean when we say “biblically literate” or “biblically illiterate,” but do we all mean the same thing? I don’t think we do, and…
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Fences: Mending or Rending
The following is a sermon I presented at the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Pensacola on September 11,2005 and originally posted here on September 13, 2005. I’m reposting it because when I went to look for it, I found that the original post had somehow been truncated, and also because there is a one word at a…
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Experiencing the (Baptism of the) Holy Spirit
This is a topic where I tend to make just about everyone uncomfortable. Long time readers may recall a previous discussion of speaking in tongues, and my own experience of it. Those who expect me to be intellectually oriented and rational are uncomfortable with mystical experiences, and many who are comfortable with the mystical experiences…
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The Early Cleansing (John 2:13-25/Lent 3B)
As I have mentioned before, I like to check out gospel passages with Darrell Bock’s notes in Jesus According to Scripture in order to see the best possible options for reconciling the various stories. In this case, I don’t find the results very promising. The only possible way to reconcile the synoptic tradition, with a…
Christian Carnival CCLXVII Posted
… at Christ’s Bridge.
Is the Cross Still Foolish? (1 Cor 1:18-25/Lent 3B)
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 (Translation and Notes) After around 2000 years of preaching, whole nations that have claimed to be Christian, serious Bible study by well-qualified scholars, and plenty of examples to work from, does the cross still look like foolishness? I have answer, “Yes, in every way!” There is an element lacking in our…
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 (Lent 3B)
It’s getting to the point where I’m not certain I haven’t posted something on this passage before. I have a draft translation of all of 1 Corinthians on my totally free Bible translation project. It’s a very drafty translation, so herewith a few corrections and some notes, which hopefully I’ll get entered into the main…
God is in Creation (Psalm 19/Lent 3B)
I have always loved Psalm 19, and I also regard it as a unified Psalm even though it is divided into two parts. Those two parts, however, convey a unified central message. God is the creator and this is why he is also the lawgiver. In the ten commandments, also part of this week’s reading,…
Leviticus 6:8-13
Baker takes a series of short sections here, and I’m not grouping them into any larger passage, because I’m under some pressure and these short sections are working for me right now. Let me note also that while the electronic edition of Rahlf’s LXX that I’m using today (GnomeSword) follows the English verse divisions, the…
The Ten Commandments in a Secular Society (Lent 3B/Ex. 20:1-17)
I find it very interesting to watch the way Christians handle the ten commandments. On the one hand, they have become an icon of our Christian culture, so that nobody wants to claim that they don’t keep them. They’re regarded as a foundational and basic icon, so we keep trying to make them the firm…
Sources and Repetition (Genesis 17/Lent2B)
In dealing with source criticism there are two broad questions for the Biblical exegete, as opposed to the actual source critic. The first is whether there are identifiable sources at all, or at least in any substantial sense, and the second is how important these sources are for exegesis. Though I’m not going to go…
The Confession and other Gospels (Mark 8:31-38/Lent 2B)
Some of my readers who know that I employ historical-critical methodologies in my Bible study may be surprised to know that one of my most useful books on the gospels is Darrel Bock’s Jesus according to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels. There is a simple reason for this. I believe that before you…
Leviticus 5:14-6:7
I’m still following the division of David W. Baker’s commentary on Leviticus in the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Today’s passage equates to Leviticus 5:14-26 in the Hebrew text, and the Hebrew text is indeed better divided than the English or the LXX. While the section is indeed properly grouped together, the…
Biblical, Convinced, and Wrong! (Lent 2B)
The story in Mark 8:31-38 fascinates me because the disciples were, in one sense, so right, yet they were so wrong. What we often forget is that there was good reason for the disciples to expect the Messiah to take over the throne of David immediately, to rescue their nation from the Romans, and to…
Romans 4:13-25 – Abraham and God (Lent 2B)
There are two questions I think will prove very much worth some meditation time. This is a rich passage, so obviously there are more, but let me emphasize just two. First, Paul uses Abraham a great deal. In an excursus on page 2015, amongst the notes on chapter 4, the New Interpreter’s Study Bible notes…
Interpreting the Bible VII – Christians Contribute to Confusion
In reality I’m going to discuss framing the questions on the test passages I quoted last time, but in doing so, I need to highlight the way Christians contribute to a misunderstanding of one another, and by non-Christians who don’t understand how many of us use the Bible. There is, of course, that vocal group…
Leviticus 4:1-5:13
It is not entirely helpful to include these two sections under the same heading, but there is certainly a break between 5:13 and 5:14, so the division is understandable as Baker does it. We’re moving here to sacrifices that are required, first for inadvertent acts in chapter 4, and then for acts of omission that…
Missing from Lent 2B
One thing that always interests me in the lectionary is the passages we don’t read. Often these are signaled by commas indicating a number of verses left out. At other times it may be interesting portions before and after. I see three interesting cases in the lectionary for Lent 2B. The first is in Genesis…
Interpreting the Bible VI – Introducing some Test Passages
I’ve been delinquent on this series since January 24, but here goes again. My major point has been to show first that there is no obvious interpretation which one should take from the Bible, but rather that how one applies the Bible to one’s life, if at all, is based on an interpretive framework. It’s…
Christian Carnival CCLXVI Posted
… at C.Orthodoxy.
A Faith that is not Silent (Psalm 22:23-31, Lent 2B)
Psalm 22:23-31 is an interesting passage of praise. It’s easy to read these praise passages as kind of interchangeable–which Psalm shall we use to praise God today. But there are generally some special features of each passage. I believe that we are to focus on God when we worship and praise him. But at the…
Lent 2B – Preliminary Thoughts
I’m going to try to write something daily, even though I never intended this site to be blog-like. I link to my blogs from here which have shorter thoughts on various passages, but I rarely get into the themes and the relationships between the passages in the lectionary in my blogging. Over the last few…
Leviticus 3: Fellowship Offering
I’m moving through this fairly quickly, paced by the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. (See the last entry.) The pace of reading is an interesting issue. In order to study Leviticus with Milgrom’s Anchor Bible commentary, I spent time nearly daily for more than a year. Now I’m covering about a chapter a…
Leviticus 2 – Offering Food
There’s a bit of a change of gears in the second chapter of Leviticus, which contains only food sacrifices. (See Leviticus 1. Abbreviations at the end of the post.) These sacrifices are most commonly not offered because of some sin or impurity, but rather as sacrifices of thanksgiving or for some celebration. I think that…
Worship: Few Words, Boy Friends, and Girl Friends
David Ker is complaining about modern worship songs (since the 90s), and Peter Kirk has partially taken him to task about it, wondering about the air down in Mozambique and whether it causes David to rant. (Personally I suspect it’s looking at too many hippos, but in non-essentials charity, I say!) David continues with a…
Biblical Studies Carnival XXXIX Posted
… at Dr. Platypus. There’s always good stuff in this carnival, though I never get around to reading everything I intend to!
What He Said
Troy Britain has it absolutely right on freedom of speech, with the added bonus that I get to agree with Christopher Hitchens at the same time, which doesn’t happen nearly as often.