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Sandra Glahn notes in a discussion on the importance of paying attention to narratival settings offers a detail that I had noticed before in the Gospel of John. She writes,
"Peter denies the Lord three times by a charcoal fire (John 18:17). Later, this setting provides Peter with a do-over in order to fully restore him. Three times Jesus gives Peter the opportunity to declare his love. And where does Jesus do so? By a charcoal fire (21:9). Through use of the charcoal-fire detail, readers can see what a grace-based ministry looks like. Interestingly, having experienced threefold grace following his threefold rejection, Peter would go on to exhort his flock to “grow in grace” (2 Pet 3:18)."
Sandra Glahn, "The Bible as Story: What the Literary Elements Reveal," Bibliotheca Sacra 178 (2021): 277.
Rob Bradshaw continues to post his helpful lists of online resources. Here is the one for biblical interpretation.
Mark Snoeberger has a very brief but helpful discussion of the issue here.
This article on the new vocabulary of 2021 in The Wall Street Journal is a good reminder of the complexities of language and how current circumstances can resulting in the creation of new words, and shape how and how often existing words are used. Good biblical interpretation should be aware of such things.
Roger Pearse has a helpful post here related to errors commonly made in reading the Church Fathers.
All the articles of the latest issue of the journal Biblical Interpretation on cognitive linguistics and NT narrative are available for free here.
Paul Himes has a helpful list of resources for the study of New Testament rhetoric here. I am not convinced that ancient rhetorical practices played as big a role in the New Testament as some suggest but it is still important to have a general working knowledge for what it was.
Reuven Kimelman has a good post here showing intertextual links in Lamentations to other books in the Old Testament.
Nijay Gupta and Cody Matchett have produced a helpful New Testament exegesis and hermeneutics bibliography. You can check it out here.
I am not the first one to use the analogy of a puzzle in regards to Old Testament prophecy. Interpreters have remarked on how it is like a puzzle with missing pieces (due to the progress of revelation) or how one is putting the pieces together without the benefit of a picture on the box. But I was recently struck by how a puzzle might help to illustrate Zechariah 9. Consider the picture below picturing the first three Star Wars movies. Various scenes from all three movies are arranged into one picture. Just by looking at the picture, one would be hard pressed to know that significant time had passed between the various scenes or their exact order unless one were already familiar with the Star Wars' trilogy. In a similar way, it seems to me that Zechariah 9–14 presents an eschatological picture of Israel's redemption and restoration through the juxtaposition of various events related to the overall picture. Seen this way, one can understand how vignettes of Alexander's conquests, the Maccabean Revolt, and the First and Second Advents, etc. can form a collage of Zechariah's overall eschatological picture.
Just in time for Christmas, Craig Blomberg tackles the issue of how Matthew 2:15 is using Hosea 11:1 here.
