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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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Sexual Laws of Leviticus 18

The sexual laws of Leviticus 18 have long been puzzling on a couple of levels. The logic of the arrangement of the laws is difficult to discern; the gaps in the laws seems inexplicable (no prohibition, for instance, of father-daughter incest); and the question of how obedience to these laws…

November 2, 2004

Righteousness in Romans 1

The phrase “righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17 has been the subject of considerable dispute in recent years, with many abandoning a standard Protestant interpretation of the passage (i.e., that the righteousness of God refers to the righteousness that God gives) in favor of a more redemptive-historical understanding (righteousness as…

November 2, 2004

Matthew 8 and Sodomy

Theodore Jennings and Tat-Siong Benny Liew have a curious article in the Fall 2004 issue of JBL . They offer an alternative interpretation of the story of the centurion of Matthew 8, an interpretation that hangs on taking “PAIS” not as “slave” or “son” but as “boy-lover.” They find plenty…

November 2, 2004
Literature

Romanticism and Spain

In a review of Joseph von Eichendorff’s collected works ( TLS , October 1, 2004), Carol Tully points out the fascination of German Romantics for Spain: “For the poets and theoreticians of the Romantic age in German, Spain was somewhere very special indeed. The nation and its culture were eulogized…

November 2, 2004

Two Kinds of Righteousness

Some intriguing quotations from Luther’s treatise on Two Kinds of Righteousness . 1) The first sort is “alien righteousness”: “The first is alien righteousness, that is the righteousness of another, instilled from without. This is the righteousness of Christ by which he justifies though faith, as it is written in…

October 27, 2004

Eucharist Lecture #3

INTRODUCTION Because of the imperfections of the reformation of the Eucharist in the sixteenth century, and because of the alien influences that have affected the practice of the Eucharist in the centuries since, there is much left to do in order to renew the Table. The Reformation must at this…

October 27, 2004

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