Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
For Part 1, click HERE . How did Paul’s earliest commentators view his juxtaposition of music and drunkenness, and did they connect it to the ancient Greek ideas of musical ethos described in Part I? Origen, one of the earliest commentators on Paul, writes about Ephesians 5:18-19: One, however, who…
Perhaps it is because I am a musician that I have always found Ephesians 5:18-19 so arbitrary. But isn’t it a little odd to contrast music and drunkenness? Perhaps it is not obvious that that is what Paul is doing; I know, for myself, that it is remarkably easy to…
In 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 Paul deals with how the Corinthian Christians are supposed to be relating to unbelieving spouses. He essentially tells them, “Look, if your unbelieving spouse is willing to stay with you as a faithful Christian, don’t initiate a divorce. If he/she wants to leave you, let him/her…
For Part 1, click HERE . Those who focus on the supposed “pacifism” of Jesus and condemn the violence of God’s judgments throughout the Old Testament overlook the ministry of sacrificial bloodshed as an alternative to human bloodshed. The sword bearing of the sacrificial system was introduced to avoid the…
How should a Christian respond to the objection that the Bible, like the Koran, is a book of violence and bloodshed? Numerous answers have been offered by well-meaning exegetes, but none of them gets to the heart of the matter: God desires to place a sword in the hands of…
Beginning this summer, Dr. Alastair Roberts will join the Theopolis Institute as an adjunct Senior Fellow, the Institute has announced. Dr. Roberts will be a regular on the Theopolis podcast, teach intensive courses and in the Fellows Program, and help develop new programs and outlets. Roberts earned his PhD from…
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There is further evidence concerning the meaning of nomos in Greek culture, coming from Martha Nussbaum’s Fragility of Goodness . In a discussion of Euripides’s Hecuba , Nussbaum points out that Polyxena, Hecuba’s daughter who is offered as a human sacrifice by the Greeks to appease the shade of Achilles,…
Sermon outline for Feb 15: In the Robbers’ Den, Luke 19:1-48 INTRODUCTION After a long journey, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, and we learn that all along his goal has been the temple. He enters the city of the Great King as a king (19:37-38), and begins to drive out the…
The JSOT also includes an article by Daniel Hays arguing that 1 Kings 1-11 portrays Solomon in a very negative light. It is not merely that Solomon falls in 1 Kings 11; there are hints throughout these chapters that Solomon has gone badly wrong. I don’t agree with everything in…
F. Gerald Downing of Manchester has an intriguing paper on “Aesthetic Behavior in the Jewish Scriptures” in the December 2003 issue of the JSOT . Among the points he makes are these: 1) There has been remarkably little attention to Hebrew conceptions of beauty. This is due in part to…
Matt Jackson-McCabe argues in the current issue of JBL that the epistle of James presents a version of Messiahship different from much of the NT. Instead of a Messianic idea centering on the death and resurrection of the Messiah, James describes a “national restoration” in which the 12 tribes (dispersed…
Gary Knoppers argues in a JBL article that, contrary to accepted scholarship, the Chronicler shows the signs of influence of Greek historiography. I find this kind of article tedious and this kind of evidence unconvincing, but along the way Knoppers makes some useful comments about the organization of the Chronicler’s…
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