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Biblical Horizons

Are Not All These Galilaeans?

One of the curiosities of the New Testament revelation is its focus on Galilee. The region of Galilee was given to Asher, Zebulun, Naphtali, and Issachar, and the events of Judges 4-8 occurred there, so it had some importance in Israelite history. But when the tribe of Ephraim led the…

by James B. JordanMay 5, 1995
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Leviticus

Who Were the Firstborn Sons?

Numbers 3:40-51 tells us that the Levites were substituted for the firstborn of Israel. The firstborn belonged to God, as stated in Exodus 13:12-13 and 22:29. It is clear that the first group of firstborn claimed by God were those He saved at the first Passover (Ex. 12). These should…

by James B. JordanMay 4, 1995
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Biblical Horizons

Eldership and Maturity, Part 1

I have lived and worked in Presbyterian circles since I became convinced of the Reformed faith over twenty years ago. Thus, it is easiest and most appropriate for me to issue criticisms and to call for reformation in the Presbyterian churches. Both Scripture and my own experience, and my observation…

by James B. JordanMay 2, 1995
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John

And the Holy of Holies Became Flesh

And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory...(John 1:14) Commentaries on John, discussing the Word or Logos in John 1, routinely turn to Greek philosophy and say that John is using a term and at least part of an idea familiar in the ancient…

by James B. JordanMay 1, 1995
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Biblical Studies

Covenant Recapitulation in New Testament History

John Wenham’s Redating Matthew, Mark & Luke: A Fresh Assault on the Synoptic Problem 1 is an impressively detailed treatment of the "synoptic problem." I lack both the patience and the knowledge to evaluate Wenham’s contribution to that vexing question. My purpose instead is to summarize his conclusions concerning the…

by Peter LeithartApril 26, 1995
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Revelation

The Seven Seals of Revelation

Commentators do not agree on the contents of the Book of Seven Seals (Revelation 5:1). Some see it as the New Covenant; others as the whole Word of God; others as the book of life; and others as the record of the Old Creation that is now being brought to…

by James B. JordanApril 2, 1995

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Calvin and the fourfold

On the Psalms, Calvin wrote: “although David speak of himself in this Psalme: yit he speaketh not as a common person, but as one that beareth the person of Christ, bicause he was the universall pattern of the whole Churche: and the same is a thing worth the marking, too…

April 10, 2008

Totus Christus

Samuel Mather wrote that “types relate not only to the Person of Christ; but to his Benefits, and to all Gospel Truths and Mysteries, even to all New Testament Dispensations.” To speak of “types of Christ” is thus not merely to speak of types fulfilled in Jesus, but types that…

April 10, 2008

Single sense

William Perkins on the one sense of Scripture, referring specifically to Galatians 4: “There is but one full and intire sense of every place of scripture, and that is also the literal sense . . . . To make many senses of scripture is to overturn all sense, and to…

April 10, 2008
History

Ren and Ref

Lewalski’s book makes clear just how much the Reformation owed to the Renaissance. The Renaissance was, among many other things, rhetoric’s reaction to centuries of dialetical hegemony, and Lewalski shows in great detail that in England at least Protestant fully shared the Renaissance obsession with rhetoric.

April 10, 2008

Puritan sacramental hermeneutics

William Perkins on figures of speech: “There is a certaine agreement and proportion of the externall things with the internall, and of the actions of one with the actions of the other: wherby it commeth to passe, that the signes, as it were certaine visible words incurring into the externall…

April 10, 2008

Typology and history

I have found Thomas’s explanation of the quadriga convincing. He argues that the multiple spiritual senses are not “located” in the words but in the things that the words name. One might say that for Thomas the words have a single, namely literal, sense; but the things they name are…

April 10, 2008

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