Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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In a 1956 JBL article on John’s gospel, one Pierson Parker makes the intriguing statement that 1 John makes almost as much sense read backward as it does read forward. This is evidence that the letter’s contents are “disconnected” and that the letter reads like “an old man’s anxious exhortations…
Another argument against Wurm’s thesis is that from John’s testimony, John’s opponents claim to be a superior enlightened class that has a higher knowledge of God than ordinary Christians can attain. But how is this an argument against Wurm’s idea that the opponents are Jews? Wouldn’t they claim to have…
Another argument against Wurm’s thesis is that from John’s testimony, John’s opponents claim to be a superior enlightened class that has a higher knowledge of God than ordinary Christians can attain. But how is this an argument against Wurm’s idea that the opponents are Jews? Wouldn’t they claim to have…
The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica mentions Wurm’s thesis that John’s opponents were Jewish Christians, but concludes that “the antithesis of John and Cerinthus, unlike that of Paul and Cerinthus (Epiph. Haer. xxviii.), is too well based in the tradition of the early Church to be dismissed as a later dogmatic reflection,…
The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica mentions Wurm’s thesis that John’s opponents were Jewish Christians, but concludes that “the antithesis of John and Cerinthus, unlike that of Paul and Cerinthus (Epiph. Haer. xxviii.), is too well based in the tradition of the early Church to be dismissed as a later dogmatic reflection,…
In his commentary on the Johannine epistles, I. Howard Marshall notes A. Wurm’s thesis that John’s opponents were Jews. John’s opponents claim to know the Father, but deny Jesus is the Christ, a position that is certainly compatible with Judaism. Marshall dismisses Wurm’s thesis because John treats his opponents as…
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