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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Studies

Exile or Ark?

In the Fall 2007 issue of JBL is an essay “Jonah Read Intertextually” by Hyun Chul Paul Kim of Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio. The first section of the essay points to numerous linguistic and conceptual parallels between Jonah (“Dove”) and the Noah narrative: Destruction of the earth, including…

by James B. JordanApril 10, 2008
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Biblical Studies

How Mark Came to be Written

The phone rang. “Hello, this is John Mark.” “Hi, JM. This is Simon Peter.” “Oh, hello, Mr. Rock,” said Mark. “What can I do for you?” “Well, JM” said Peter, “I’ve been very impressed by your recent essays in the New Jew Review , especially your series on David as…

by James B. JordanMarch 24, 2008
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Biblical Studies

How Matthew Came to be Written

The sun had set and finally the crowds had dispersed. The disciples gathered in the upper room, exhausted but joyful after preaching and teaching in many different languages all day, not to speak of seeing to the baptism of three thousand people. James bar Alphaeus put on a CD of…

by James B. JordanMarch 20, 2008
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Biblical Horizons

Church-Culture | Cause-Effect

There was a time, I think, when Evangelical Christianity in North America tended to be dominated by what might be (pejoratively) called a “retreatist” or even “defeatist” view of society. For various reasons, Christians believed that society was headed downhill and there was nothing the Church could do about it,…

by Mark HorneMarch 14, 2008
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Genesis

Is Genesis 15 an Attack on Forensic Justification?

Hebrews 11 makes it very clear that Abram (later, Abraham) exercised saving faith from the time he left his home to go wonder in Caanan. He was justified at least from the time of the call in Genesis 12.1-3 on. Yet I keep reading people who think that any appeal…

by Mark HorneMarch 6, 2008
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Biblical Horizons

On Renewing Theology

I spent the last few days at A Conversation on Denominational Renewal , which thankfully met in St. Louis. The conference was well attended, about 300 or more people. The audience was mostly PCA ministers and elders, but because it was held in St. Louis there were a good many…

by Jeff MeyersMarch 1, 2008

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Spirit of iniquity

Israel laments over her sins and their consequences (Isaiah 64:5-7). Yahweh is angry because of Israel’s persistence in sin (v. 5), and as a result Israel becomes unclean and withered. Verse 6 uses a series of comparisons (using the particle k- four times) that stress the universality of Israel’s predicament…

June 20, 2014

Genesis 1 in Ancient Perspective?

John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis 1 promises a lot. It offers what Walton calls a “face-value” and “literal” reading of Genesis 1, but one that sidesteps the problems of attempting to reconcile science and the Bible. For Walton, creationist readings and concordist readings that attempt to correlate Genesis…

June 20, 2014

Sacramental Permeability

Andrea Bieler and Luise Schottroff ( The Eucharist ) speak of “sacramental permeability.” That phrase brings a number of emphases to the fore. For starters it “takes seriously the realities of human bodies as a central part of Eucharistic practice and life.” Once we take the bodies of those who…

June 19, 2014

Creedalizing history

Martin Noth claims that historical accounts in the Old Testament arose from cultic contexts and creedal statements. He claims to be tracing the “historicizing” process. Jeffrey Niehaus says that the process is actually the opposite, a “creedalizing” one ( God at Sinai , 77): “Leviticus 23:42-43 tells Israel that at…

June 19, 2014

Politics and Puzzlement

Lynn Hunt doesn’t think much of Jonathan Israel’s latest, Revolutionary Ideas . She charges that Israel’s intellectual history lacks nuance and fudges the evidence because he “thinks about philosophy and philosophers in obsessively dichotomous terms.” There are children of light and children of darkness, the former are the radicals, the…

June 19, 2014

Ascent from the Sea

Memory is supposed to encourage and ignite hope. In Isaiah 63, however, the people of Israel remember the old days of Moses and despair: “Where is he?” they ask - the one who brought His people through the sea, put His Spirit in their midst, divided the waters and led…

June 19, 2014

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