Interview with Mark Keown on Philippians

Todd Scacewater has a pretty interesting interview here with Mark Keown on Philippians. Keown has written a two-volume commentary on Philippians in the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary series.

Questioning Apocalyptic

I have long struggled with apocalyptic both as a phenomenon and as a genre. It is not so much that I don't understand what is said about these but rather how the term apocalyptic and the baggage that comes with it is applied to books in the Bible (e.g., Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, Revelation). Too often it seems that the label is used much like a hermeneutical trump card. Merely playing the card means this or that. But labeling a text is not interpreting it. There also seems to be a fair amount of circularity in the process. Certain texts are determined to be apocalyptic and therefore we derive a definition of apocalyptic based on characteristics noted in the books. In turn we say that a certain book is apocalyptic because it fits a definition that we derived from books we have already determined were apocalyptic. I hope that makes sense. In any case, Paul Henenbury raises some issues here that resonate with me. But I will have to wait until his forthcoming fuller discussion is available to assess his critique overall. 

Christianity Today's Top Ten Biblical Archaeology Discoveries of 2017

Gordon Govier enumerates and discusses them here.

Todd Bolen's List of Top 10 Discoveries in Biblical Archaeology from 2017

Check Todd's list out here. And if you don't already have Todd's resources or his Photo Companion to the Bible and/or his Pictorial Library of Bible Lands were left out of your stocking, you might want to check them out here.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!