Peter Kirk linked to my post on “an eye for an eye” in responding to David Ker’s post What to do with the vengeance in the Old Testament? Skip it! As a result I’ve been able to follow a rather substantial number of posts discussing this issue. One of these comes from John Hobbins, who…
At first glance, this is a good sign for a Christian. After all, Jesus replaces “an eye for an eye” with “Do not resist the one who is evil” (Matthew 5:38-39). But I think it illustrates the way we fail to understand certain phrases as they were intended. “An eye for an eye” or lex…
I recently received my copy of this good looking volume from Tyndale for review, and I have summarized its features here. I noted there that this is not a book I will read once and then write a short review. Rather, I’m going to blog through it, which also means that I will be blogging…
This is a first look, before I have read or used the book extensively. I have simply looked through it, read the preface and some introductions, and laid out a plan for reading and study using the volume. I intend to “blog through” rather than simply read and review this volume. See the end of…
When I teach people about how to study the Bible, and especially when I talk to them about handling difficult passages, there is one category of passage that dominates: Violent and sometimes difficult to understand passages from the Old Testament. How can a God of love command the slaughter of thousands, even women and children?…
Ehrman, Bart D. God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-06-117397-4. 294 pp. I have previously noted that Bart Ehrman’s books are much more controversial on their jackets than on their pages (see notes on The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot and Response…
I haven’t been blogging much for the last two weeks, as I’ve been pretty busy with other things. While I was too busy to get right two them, all four books that I had on interlibrary loan arrived at the same time, one of the unfortunate problems of requesting lists of books. Several of them…
In 2005 Peter Enns, a professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, published a book titled Inspiration and Incarnation, and it is likely going to cost him his tenured position. I’m writing about this on this blog because of the implications of his incarnational view of inspiration for Biblical interpretation. I have not yet…
I frequently recommend reading the story of the exodus through conquest as a kind of connected narrative, trying to learn from the stories. The problem I’ve discovered is that many people skip over the ceremonial and legal parts of the Bible and thus often miss important narrative points that are interleaved with those elements. Ultimately,…
