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Writing

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

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Biblical Studies

Is Abraham’s Life a Type?

The preceding essay has caused me to consider the possibility that the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis contains a typological prophecy of the history of Israel; that is, that the events in Abraham’s life broadly anticipate events in Israel’s history. This kind of pattern is seen in the…

by James B. JordanMay 5, 2001
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Hermeneutics

Thirty-Eight Years by the Sheep Pool

by: Jeff Meyers and James Jordan In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we read of a man who had been ill for 38 years and who was lying by a pool located by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. This sheep waited, as did many other infirm people, for an…

by Jeff MeyersDecember 5, 2000
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Biblical Horizons

How Are Women Saved?

What had been reduced to ruin by this sex, would by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. —Tertullian What is Paul saying about women and salvation…

by Jeff MeyersOctober 5, 2000
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Jeremiah

The Return of Hamor

Back in Biblical Horizons 132 I discussed the horrible abuse of the converted men of Salem/Shechem in Genesis 34. These Hivites had joined the covenant by circumcision and then were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. That, however, is not the end of their story. In Joshua 9 we find the…

by James B. JordanOctober 4, 2000
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Biblical Horizons

Abram’s 318 Men

Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 2000
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Hermeneutics

153 Large Fish

Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 2000

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Theology

Eschatological Economy

At a quick glance, Douglas H. Knight’s The Eschatological Economy (Eerdmans, 2006) looks very good. Some of Knight’s other work has been on John Zizioulas, the Orthodox Trinitarian theologian, and this book includes discussions of Zizioulasian themes like Trinity, personhood, Trinitarian personhood, personhood and being, etc. Yet, Knight’s book is…

July 4, 2007
Uncategorized

New Pentecost, New Babel

A reader, Dan Glover, sends the following reflections concerning my quotations from John Mbiti on the “Pentecostal” experience of getting the Bible in the vernacular: “Your comment from John Mbiti got me thinking of what the Bible in the vernacular of a culture does. It ignited the reformation as well…

July 4, 2007
Music

Bach’s Bible

In his biography of Bach, Martin Geck quotes a number of notes that Bach penned in the “Calov Bible,” a copy of Luther’s translation that belonged at one time to the theologian Abraham Calov. On Miriam and her singing women, he writes, “First prelude to be performed in two choruses…

July 3, 2007
Music

Bach’s Bible

In his biography of Bach, Martin Geck quotes a number of notes that Bach penned in the “Calov Bible,” a copy of Luther’s translation that belonged at one time to the theologian Abraham Calov. On Miriam and her singing women, he writes, “First prelude to be performed in two choruses…

July 3, 2007
Biblical Studies

Scriptures and separation

Studying African independent churches, David Barrett concluded that the single most important factor in dividing independent churches from missionary-founded churches was the vernacular translation of the Bible. As soon as the Bible was available in the native tongue, readers could check the teaching and practice of the missionary churches against…

July 3, 2007
History

Museums or churches?

Mbiti laments that often “African Christians feel terribly foreign within the doors of the churches to which we belong. Lutheran missionaries have made us more Lutheran than the Germans; Roman Catholic missionaries have made us feel and behave more Roman than the Italians; Anglican missionaries have made us more Anglican…

July 3, 2007

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