Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If you’re a preacher looking for good commentaries on Ezra, you’ll struggle. Certainly to find ones that wrestle in good detail with the text. And certainly ones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg. There’s a good bit more for Nehemiah, which is odd, as the two are…
Quick thought experiment: try to pretend you’ve never read 1 John before. Read 1:1-6. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Now, on to v. 7: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with ______….” What word would you expect in that blank, based…
In my work as a Bible translator, I was recently checking our translation team’s draft of Genesis 8:8, which says of Noah (translating the Hebrew quite literally): And he sent out the dove from with him to see: had the waters lessened from upon the face of the ground? Part…
Just in case a reader may not know Weinberg, he is a theoretical physicist and the winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1979, as well as countless other prizes for his research. He is also a prolific, lucid, and captivating writer. If you want to read something on…
Colossians 1:15-20 is a famous passage in Paul’s epistles because it is a succinct and powerful poem. It appears even to have been a hymn. Given the uniquely Pauline language — “reconciliation” is a term used only by Paul — it should not seem odd to attribute the poem/hymn to…
Stalker (1979) is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky based on Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It shows a day from the life of a stalker, a man who enters the so-called "Zone", an Alien landing site, where he leads people to a room that grants people’s innermost desires, which…
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Bailey makes a perceptive comment at one point, drawing on the experience of a Jesuit psychologist of his acquaintance. This psychologist found that he could fairly quickly get his patients to talk openly about their sexual histories and sins, but that when he began to ask them about their finances,…
Kenneth Bailey’s recent monograph on the prodigal son, Jacob and the Prodigal (IVP), is full of stimulating insights. A long-time Christian teacher in Arabic and Syriac-speaking countries, Bailey always brings to his interpretations a wealth of knowledge of the cultural background and attitudes of men of the Near East. Also,…
Communion meditation, January 11: If you want to have a calm meal, don’t invite Jesus. Over and over in Luke’s gospel, Jesus uses mealtime to confront the Pharisees, to challenge their unforgiving Spirit, to castigate them for neglecting the weightier matters of the law, to charge them with killing prophets.…
Exhortation for January 11: In the sermon text this morning, we see that Jesus is establishing and organizing His kingdom by changing practices at the table. This seems to be an odd way to establish a kingdom. We think of kingdoms being established through conquest, war, palace coups, or popular…
Green denies that the parable of the banquet in Luke 14:16ff is about the Messianic banquet. It suggests that God at one time did NOT want the poor to His banquet, but included them as a kind of afterthought; this not only is unflattering to God, but goes contrary to…
Green points out too the grammatical shift between Luke 14:23 and v 24: He moves from narrating a story in third person to a direct address. This is still the master speaking to the slave, but it is also the master speaking over the head of the slave to the…
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