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Advent

Advent and Christmas Music Recommendations

Inspired by our recent podcast on Christmas and Advent music recommendations, we offer here a list of excellent recordings that are sure to enrich your Advent and Christmas season. Praetorius: Mass for Christmas Morning Paul McCreesh with the Gabrieli Consort and Players Amazon | Spotify | Apple Music 2. Christmas…

by John Ahern and Paul BuckleyDecember 23, 2020
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Advent

Between the Altar and the City: Isaiah 65:17-25

In the year 1483 in the city of Nuremberg, the leaders of the renowned Saint Lawrence Church were seeking to redesign their altar, and above the table where the priests presided over the eucharist, they wanted new art installed above the prestigious Krell altar. What they decided on took everyone…

by Casey BedellDecember 22, 2020
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Advent

Why We're the Real Seventh Day Adventists

The consequences of disobedience start with exile from the garden of God and the Tree of Yahweh, but they do not end there. They cascade down through the structure of the dynastic order. Everything which had previously been given in the Kingdom of Elohim is either taken back or curtailed…

by Jerry BowyerDecember 18, 2020
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Biblical Studies

Psalm 23: A Lesson in Reading Biblical Poetry

Parallelism: A Course Correction If you have ever studied Hebrew poetry, you have probably heard its basic poetic feature described as “parallelism.” Hebrew poetry is not metered, it does not rhyme, it does not employ many of the common poetical tropes, but its distinctive (and almost universal) feature is commonly…

by Ryan HandermannDecember 15, 2020
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Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 17 and the Separation of Powers

In The Crown and the Courts , David C. Flatto traces the development of the idea of judicial independence in Jewish commentaries on the Scriptures – particularly Deuteronomy 17 – from the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods. These periods roughly span 400 BC to 300 AD. Flatto does not…

by James R. RogersDecember 11, 2020
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Advent

Zechariah and John: A Story in Names

A curious feature of the Infancy Narratives in the Gospel of Luke is the naming of John the Baptist. When the angel appears to Zechariah, he is instructed to give his promised son the name John (Luke 1:13). On the day of John’s circumcision, Luke tells us that “they [presumably…

by Rhys LavertyDecember 8, 2020

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Justice, Justification, Baptism

Michael Gorman ( Becoming the Gospel ) points out what Richard Hays has called the “deft word-play” on the dik - root in 1 Corinthians 6:1-11. The word-play is sometimes lost because English translations use different word groups to translate different forms of the root. If we stick to a…

February 4, 2016
Atonement

Atonement theory?

Since Harnack, theologians have glibly spoken of Anselm's Cur Deus Homo as a form of “atonement theory” or a “model” of atonement. According to Katherine Sonderegger, Harnack told the story of atonement theology in terms of a set of “competing ‘models,' each with schools and eponymous heads”: “Harnack’s nineteenth-century magisterial…

February 4, 2016

Second Exodus

In an essay form Israel's Prophetic Heritage , Bernard W. Anderson analyzes the “exodus typology” in what he calls “second Isaiah” (available here ). He acknowledges that “there are numerous linguistic echoes of the Exodus tradition” throughout the text, he finds ten places where “the new exodus is the specific…

February 3, 2016

Schumpeter on Ideology

In a famous 1949 essay on “ Science and Ideology ,” published in American Economic Review , Joseph Schumpeter highlighted the role of ideology is scientific research, including economic research. The majority of economists, he said, “are ready enough to admit its presence though, like Marx, they find it only…

February 3, 2016

Cinema, Time, Space

In his book, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 , Stephen Kern explores how technological innovations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (“telephone, wireless telegraph, x-ray, cinema, bicycle, automobile, and airplane,” 1) reoriented the experience of time and space. Simultaneous communication seemed to erase space, and rapid…

February 3, 2016

Seal of the Spirit

The New Testament speaks of the “seal of the Spirit” in several places (2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:13; 4:30). The Spirit marks out believers, sealing them for the day of redemption. The Spirit is the seal, or affixes the seal - a brand, a mark of ownership, a regimental tattoo…

February 3, 2016

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