Exegesis and Expository Preaching

"An expository sermon rises and falls on exegesis. Exegesis involves a thorough, analytical study of a biblical passage in order to develop a useful interpretation of the passage. Before we can preach any passage, we need to thoroughly understand it; exegesis is the process by which we determine the meaning.”

Paul D. Wegner, Using Old Testament Hebrew in Preaching: A Guide for Students and Pastors (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2009), 68–9.

Confession vs. Apologies?

Recently I read this article on how to make apologies for verbal faux pas in the work place. This article got me to thinking about apologies and the Bible. It seems to me that the Bible tends to emphasize confession rather than apology. But, Is a confession the same as an apology? Just thinking out loud here. What do you think?

The Divinity of Christ

"Some critics of Christianity seem to think that you can get rid of the idea of the divinity of Christ, and leave every other Christian doctrine untouched. They seem to think it's like some sort of precision surgery, allowing you to remove apparently unnecessary parts of the human body - it's not taking away something unimportant, but the very source of it's life and power! These words of C. S. Lewis sum up the situation perfectly: "The doctrine of Christ's divinity seems to me not something stuck on which you can unstick, but something that peeps out at every point so that you'd have to unravel the whole web to get rid of it." To deny the divinity of Christ is unnecessary and leads to a totally inadequate version of Christianity."

Alister McGrath, Explaining Your Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 61.

The Bible and the Current Immigration Debate

I must confess that I have been a bit uncomfortable with how the Bible is sometimes being used in the current immigration debate. Here is an article by Jason Poling at the Washington Post website that exposes just some of the problems.

Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary

Anyone who is interested in working on biblical Hebrew vocabulary might be interested in this.

Testing Ancient Coins

Ancient coins are often an overlooked aspect of primary source material for biblical backgrounds. Coins can shed light on a number of historical questions as seen in this article.

HT: G. M. Grena

Barrett on the Church

“The chuch as the body that lives under—or indeed on—the cross is expressing in its disciplined and triumphant life the very nature of its Lord; and this is not in any sense peripheral.”

C. K. Barrett, Church, Ministry, and Sacraments in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 26.

Latest Issue of Review of Biblical Literature

The latest issue of Review of Biblical Literature is out. Reviews that may be of interest from a Bible Exposition perspective include:

Charles B. Cousar
Philippians and Philemon: A Commentary
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7099
Reviewed by Eduard Verhoef

E. A. Judge
The First Christians in the Roman World: Augustan and New Testament Essays
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7363
Reviewed by Everett Ferguson

Ulrike Mittmann-Richert
Der Sühnetod des Gottesknechts: Jesaja 53 im Lukasevangelium
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7569
Reviewed by Christoph Stenschke

William D. Mounce
Basics of Biblical Greek: Grammar
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7437
Reviewed by Laurence M. Vance

Jacques van Ruiten and J. Cornelis de Vos, eds.
The Land of Israel in Bible, History, and Theology: Studies in Honour of Ed Noort
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7387
Reviewed by Hallvard Hagelia

William A. Simmons
Peoples of the New Testament World: An Illustrated Guide
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6934
Reviewed by James Riley Strange

Michael Sokoloff
A Syriac Lexicon: A Translation from the Latin, Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann's Lexicon Syriacum
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7340
Reviewed by H. F. van Rooy

Günter Stemberger
Juden und Christen im spätantiken Palästina
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6844
Reviewed by Peter J. Tomson

Introduction to 1-2 Corinthians

Matt Capps has posted a pretty good introduction to 1-2 Corinthians here.

Seifrid on Luke's View of the Law in Acts

“I am arguing that, at crucial points, Luke gives evidence that he maintains an ethic which transcends Torah (and hence may overturn it): (a) the enthroned Messiah, Jesus, places new demands on humankind; (b) the recipients of salvation (and hence, the people of God) are not determined by Mosaic law, but by faith in Jesus; (c) the Mosaic law is not the criterion which determines the modus vivendi of the Gentile believers; (d) the Mosaic law need not govern the conduct of Jewish believers either.”

M. A. Seifrid, “Jesus and the Law in Acts,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 30 (1987): 40.

Israel Museum Reopening

See Todd Bolen's post on the reopening of the Israel Museum.

Mounce on 2 Peter 1:20

Second Peter 1:20 is well known as crux interpretum. Bill Mounce has a good discussion of the issues here. For what its worth, I happen to agree with Mounce's conclusion. I offer the following four reasons for the the "origins" view (I prefer inspiration view).

(1) This view fits the context of authentication (v. 19). Peter never states how one is to properly interpret the Scriptures.
(2) Grammatically, v. 20 goes with v. 19 rather than v. 21 Thus, Peter is not talking about interpretation but authentication (Green, 2 Peter and Jude, 90).
(3) The conjunction ga,r is often used inferentially to indicate the basis of or conclusion for something previously stated. It is easier to see how the logic fits this view (Scripture is inspired → how inspiration occurs) rather than the other (Scripture must be properly interpreted → how inspiration occurs).
(4) While the term evpi,lusij can be translated as “interpretation,” it is never used this way elsewhere to refer to the interpretation of Scripture (Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 230–31).

Irony in 1 John

Ardel Caneday has a brief but interesting post on irony in 1 John. Read it here.

Gordon Fee's 1-2 Thessalonians on Sale at 50% Off

Eisenbraun's deal of the day has Gordon Fee's 1-2 Thessalonians commentary (NICNT) on sale at 50% Off ($22.00). The sale is only good until tomorrow at noon. Check it out here.

The End of the Law in Luke-Acts

I have been working through Jonathan Bayes, The Weakness of the Law: God’s Law and the Christian in New Testament Perspective, Paternoster Biblical Monographs, ed. I. Howard Marshall et al. (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000). Here is a section in which Bayes discusses the end of the ceremonial aspects of the Mosaic Law in Luke-Acts.

"There are indications already in Luke’s Gospel that the coming of Jesus as the Christ who must suffer (Lk. 9:20, 22), heralds the displacement of the ceremonial law by the new reality of fulfillment in Him. It is noteworthy that five references to the law are clustered in 2:22–39, but the word occurs only four more times in the Gospel thereafter. For this reason the authenticity of Luke 1–2 has been doubted, but this view has been compellingly refuted. More likely, the phenomenon is symbolic of the fact that a transition to something new has begun with the event described in chapter 2. Luke notes that, for the angels, it was more important that the One who had been born was the Christ than that His name was Jesus (2:11). Later, Jesus twice pronounces “Woe” on the lawyers (11:46, 52): this again may be an indication of the approaching demise of the law. In 22:37, in connection with the fulfillment in Him of the Scripture prophesying His identification with the transgressors (avno,mwn), Jesus says: “The things concerning Me have an end (te,loj).” Perhaps there is a deliberate double entendre here: the te,loj (goal) of what was prophesied about Jesus, and the life which He lived, was this identification in his death with the lawless, but that very death spells the te,loj (termination) of the law which thus pointed forward to Him.

“Because Jesus is the Christ, His coming, and particularly His death have rendered the old ceremonies unnecessary, since He is their fulfillment. Without Him, the law was incomplete; now that He has come the law is obsolete, and the time would come when that would be recognized and the ceremonies would cease.”

Bayes, The Weakness of the Law, 72–3.

Köstenberger and O’Brien on Acts 15

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“Luke’s account of this momentous incident in Acts 15 has been described as ‘the most crucial chapter in the whole book,’ since it is positioned both ‘structurally and theologically at the very heart’ of Acts. “The chapter describes the turning point of Luke’s story. The threat to the expansion of the gospel to Gentiles is not only dealt with, but is turned around so that the Christian mission now extends to western Asia and Europe (15:36–19:41). After the council the Jerusalem church is hardly mentioned in Acts. Once the decision has been made, there is no further mention of the Jerusalem apostles (apart from 16:4), and the focus of the book is on the irresistible progress of the gospel to 'the ends of the earth' through Paul.”

Andreas J. Köstenberger and Peter T. O’Brien, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A Biblical Theology of Mission, ed. D. A. Carson (Downers Grove, IL, 2001), 151.

Decker on Preaching Schedules

Rod Decker has some helpful insights on preaching schedules here.

The Fifty Most Extraordinary Churches of the World

For something different check out this post on the fifty most extraordinary churches of the world.

HT; Stephen Smuts

The Pentateuch as a Painting

In John Sailhamer's The Meaning of the Pentateuch, he compares interpreting the Pentateuch to interpreting a Rembrandt painting (p. 150). Here is his paragraph.

Since the biblical narratives are like an artist’s painting, in order to understand a painting, we must look at what the artist has painted on the canvas. We would not attempt to understand a Rembrandt painting by taking a photograph of his model and using it to fill in places in the painting that are not clear or are cast in the shadows. That may help us see or understand the people and places Rembrandt painted, that is, his subject matter, but it would not help us understand the painting itself. To understand a Rembrandt painting, one must look at it and see its colors, shapes and textures. One must understand what he meant to do with each brushstroke. In the same way, to understand the Pentateuch, one must look at it and the words of its author.”

Interview with Andraes Köstenberger on the Gospel of John

Kevin DeYoung has an interesting interview with Andreas Köstenberger on the Gospel of John here.

Latest Issue of Review of Biblical Literature

The latest issue of Review of Biblical Literature is out. Reviews that may be of interest from a Bible Exposition perspective include:

Dan W. Clanton Jr.
Daring, Disreputable and Devout: Interpreting the Hebrew Bible's Women in the Arts and Music
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7201
Reviewed by Dorothea Erbele-Küster

Carl S. Ehrlich, ed.
From an Antique Land: An Introduction to Ancient Near Eastern Literature
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7262
Reviewed by Aren Maeir

Richard A. Freund and Rami Arav, eds.
Bethsaida: A City by the North Shore of the Sea of Galilee
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7255
Reviewed by Wolfgang Zwickel

Sara Japhet
The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7303
Reviewed by Louis C. Jonker

Anne-Marie Korte and Maaike de Haardt, eds.
The Boundaries of Monotheism: Interdisciplinary Explorations into the Foundations of Western Monotheism
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7073
Reviewed by Nathan MacDonald

Amy-Jill Levine, Dale Allison, and John Dominic Crossan, eds.
The Historical Jesus in Context
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6075
Reviewed by Shelly Matthews

Richard R. Losch
All the People in the Bible: An A-Z Guide to the Saints, Scoundrels, and Other Characters in Scripture
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6658
Reviewed by Peter Judge

Rivka Nir, ed.
Early Christianity: The First Three Centuries [Hebrew]
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7130
Reviewed by Joshua Schwartz

Russell Pregeant
Encounter with the New Testament: An Interdisciplinary Approach
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7092
Reviewed by Abson Joseph

David P. Wright
Inventing God's Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7232
Reviewed by Frank H. Polak

Terry R. Wright
The Genesis of Fiction: Modern Novelists as Biblical Interpreters
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6783
Reviewed by James A. Metzger

Magnus Zetterholm, ed.
The Messiah in Early Judaism and Christianity
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=6217
Reviewed by Adam Winn

Seitz on the Trinity in the Old Testament: A Canonical Approach Audio

See here for audio of Christopher Seitz speaking on "The Trinity in the Old Testament: A Canonical Approach."

HT: Rob Kashow

Free Old Testament Survey Course

BiblicalTraining.org has posted a new audio course on Old Testament Survey taught by Paul House. Check it out here and other courses here.

Recommended Reading for New Testament Backgrounds

Ben Blackwell has a list of recommended primary sources for New Testament backgrounds here.

New Journal: Early Christianity

The first issue of the new journal, Early Christianity, is now available as a free pdf here. This issues theme is new directions in Pauline theology.

New Directions in Pauline Theology
Michael Wolter: Die Entwicklung des paulinischen Christentums von einer Bekehrungsreligion zu einer Traditionsreligion 15–40
Judith M. Lieu: “As much my apostle as Christ is mine”: The dispute over Paul between Tertullian and Marcion 41–59
Matthias Konradt: Die Christonomie der Freiheit. Zu Paulus’ Entfaltung seines ethischen Ansatzes in Gal 5,13-6,10 60–81
John M. G. Barclay: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy”: The Golden Calf and Divine Mercy in Romans 9-11 and Second Temple Judaism 82–106
Jonathan A. Linebaugh: Debating Diagonal Δικαιοσύνη: The Epistle of Enoch and Paul in Theological Conversation 107–128

New Discoveries
Peter Arzt-Grabner, Neues zu Paulus aus den Papyri des römischen Alltags 131–157
Claire Clivaz, A New NT Papyrus: 126 (PSI 1497) 158–162

New Books
Robert Jewett, Romans (Mark Reasoner) 165–174
Martin Vahrenhorst, Kultische Sprache in den Paulusbriefen (Martin Meiser) 174–179
Douglas Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Francis Watson) 179–185

New Projects
Rainer Hirsch-Luipold, Ratio Religionis. Religiöse Philosophie und philosophische Religion in der frühen Kaiserzeit 189–191

New Discoveries
Peter Arzt-Grabner, Neues zu Paulus aus den Papyri des römischen Alltags 131–157
Claire Clivaz, A New NT Papyrus: 126 (PSI 1497) 158–162