The Fall 2013 Baker Academic catalog is out. I am particularly interested in two Acts commentaries that are scheduled to be available this year. Hopefully, both will be done in time for SBL/ETS.
Craig Keener's Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, vol. 2: 3:1-14:28 is due in October. You can read more about this volume here.
William Kurz's Acts in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series is due in November. You can read more about this volume here.
See this article on the growing problem of seminary debt. I am so thankful that I was able to finish seminary without any debt.
HT: Steve Lemke
See this interesting blog post at Lingua Franca on the challenges and politics of delineating and counting the languages of the world. The work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics receives special notice.
Haaretz has an interesting article on a new interpretation of a phrase from the Dead Sea Scrolls' Psalm Scroll in a poem called the “Apostrophe to Zion.” You can read the article here.
Carl Rasmussen has an interesting post on Paul's journey on the road to Assos (Acts 20:13-14) here. The post contains some nice illustrations.
William H. Marty, The World of Jesus: Making Sense of the People and Places of Jesus’ Day (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2013).
The World of Jesus is a popular-level introduction into the history and culture that serves as the context for the world of Jesus and the early church. Marty uses both biblical and extrabiblical sources to highlight the most significant persons, events, and philosophies for the thought world of the first century AD. The author’s approach is basically chronological, starting with the Persian period and ending with the Roman period. Each chapter concludes with helpful discussion questions. There is also a nine-page glossary to round out the study.
This work is user-friendly in its brevity, readability, and use of timelines, tables, and various excurses. It is a fairly comprehensive but not exhaustive treatment. My only minor criticism is that each chapter typically begins with a vignette that mixes historical fact with a bit of artistic license (e.g., pp. 19-20, 103-4). This is okay, but a reader might be confused as to where the former ends and the latter begins. But this only barely diminishes the value of this work to introduce lay-readers to the world of Jesus.
Thanks to Bethany House for providing the book used in this unbiased review.
G-dcast, a "nonprofit that uses new technology to do Jewish education, is synthesizing the scapegoat and PostSecret.com in its “Atonement App,” which allows users to confess, anonymously, with the help of an animated goat who roams the web."
You can read more about this app here.
Michael Svigel has a balanced discussion on Christians and cremation here.
This announcement might be a bit late, but the latest issue of Themelios is available as a free PDF here.
National Geographic is planning to present a program during the Christmas season entitled, "The Lost Faces of the Bible." The four part series will include:
Lost Face of the Bible: Delilah Revealed
A 3,000-year-old female skull gives the forensic team the chance to reconstruct the face of a Philistine lady.
Lost Face of the Bible: Sacrifical Child
The discovery of a tiny infant in a clay jar leads the team to explore humanity's history of sacrifice, and put a face to the mysterious child.
Lost Face of the Bible: Ancient Warrior
Over 6,000 years after 'The Warrior' was laid to rest in a remote desert cave the team try to find out how he lived and what he looked like.
Lost Face of the Bible: The Man Who Saw Jesus
Archaeologists reconstruct the life of a skeleton found in Galilee as the forensic team prepares to unveil the 2,000-year-old man's face.
You can read more about the program at the National Geographic website here.
Bible students and professors might be interested in a back-to-school sale on Pictorial Library of Bible Lands. In my opinion, this Pictorial Library is the best photographic resource available for teaching and personal study of the Holy Lands as it relates to the Bible.
For the next 10 days, 5 volumes are on sale for $100, including free shipping in the US. When the sale ends, the price will return to $170. To get the sale price, click here.
They are also offering a $100 discount on the complete 18-volume Pictorial Library of Bible Lands or only $289. This set includes 17,500 photographs in jpg and PowerPoint format, including detailed explanations about the sites, history, and biblical significance. To get $100 off, click here.
Last week while teaching through Jeremiah, I cautioned my students about claiming the promise found in Jeremiah 29:11. Here is a recent article on the controversy surrounding the Christian appropriation of the verse.
Seven common-sense Facebook tips for pastors here.
Nicolas Batzig has a post on the biblical theology of exile/restoration in the Old Testament Prophets here.
Andy Naselli has some thoughts and links related to Ezra 7:10 here.
"The ministry in any age is in danger of losing its purpose. Only when it remembers the one who gave us that ministry-the one who did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped, the one who humbled himself by taking the very form of a servant (Phil 2:5-11)–only then can it know its true purpose, which always has been and always will be diakonia, service."
Joel C. Elowsky, “The Ministry in the Early Church,” Concordia Theological Seminary 76 (2012), 310.
I think that more
attention should be paid to the theology of the songs that we sing. So whether
I agree or disagree with the PCUSA’s decision to exclude “In Christ Alone” from
the denomination’s hymnbook, I do appreciate that theological concerns appear
to be at the core of the decision. To read more about this controversial
decision go here.
"The element of surprise is the key structural device employed by the writer of Jonah. Before 3:10–4:1, the writer misdirects the readers, leading them to picture Yahweh as a God of wrath who pursues persons or groups until they are appropriately punished, and leading them to see Jonah as a reluctant, passive prophet who flees the task of crying against a wicked city. The repentance of the Ninevites poses an intriguing problem, since no one has up to this point in the book repented and sought God’s forgiveness, and the question rings out: “Will this wrathful God forgive Nineveh?” The writer then springs his surprise: God does indeed repent of the evil he had intended to inflict on Nineveh, while the seemingly passive Jonah issues a furious fusillade against God (3:10 and 4:l). The element of surprise makes the readers vulnerable and therefore receptive to the writer’s basic point that Jonah’s anger and vindictiveness are inappropriate in the light of the forgiving nature of God. The final chapter emphasizes this point by means of the dialogue between Jonah and God, wherein God is clearly portrayed as one eager to forgive his creatures, while Jonah is seen to be excessively self-serving."
Alan Jon Hauser, “Jonah: In Pursuit of the Dove,” Journal of Biblical Literature 104 (1985): 37.
"By now it will be clear that we shall not get anywhere with this until we have defined what we understand by Biblical theology. If we take it to mean the theological content of the Bible, and in particular the common outlook that binds the New to the Old Testament, we might be able to trace it back to the Epistle to the Hebrews. That epistle can plausibly claim to have been the first systematic attempt to demonstrate that the true meaning of the Hebrew Bible can only be found in the person and work of Jesus Christ, to which it bore witness “at many times and in many ways,” as its opening sentence so memorably states. Few analysts of modern Biblical theology would go that far back, but there is little doubt that virtually all serious Christian writers from New Testament times to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment took the approach of Hebrews as axiomatic for their interpretation of the Bible and their understanding of what Christian theology is. Systematization, which began with what we now call scholastic theology in the thirteenth century and was adapted to both Protestant and Eastern Orthodox needs after the Reformation, may have gone beyond the Bible but it did not go against it, at least not intentionally."
Gerald L. Bray, "Biblical Theology and From Where it Came," Southwestern Journal of Theology 55.2 (2013): 194.
These days it is not theologically fashionable to affirm Davidic authorship of Psalm 110 or to see the psalm as primarily Messianic rather than merely royal. So in this instance I am wholly unfashionable. That being said, as I was sorting through some articles in my file cabinet I was pleased to rediscover an article by W. J. Paul. Paul argues that,
“The conclusion is therefore inevitable: Psalm 110 speaks about a person who is king and priest. But in the history of Israel there never was such a king. The only probable solution is that the psalm speaks about a future king-priest. It deals not with a historical king, but with the Messiah. The unchallenged authority of the king whose rule will be universal and eternal points in the same direction. At the beginning of the psalm we can read lĕdāwîd. This phrase cannot mean that the psalm was directed to David, because David was not a priest. So we have to read it as “from David.” Thus, if the heading is reliable, David is the author of the psalm. With E. J. Kissane I am of the opinion that ‘there is nothing in the psalm itself which is inconsistent with this’ [Psalms, 190]. The NT confirms the Davidic authorship. Therefore, it is not necessary to assume that Jesus himself did not ascribe the psalm to David and merely appears to have asked his question in relation to the presuppositions of the Pharisees. The only consistent explanation of Psalm 110 in the context of the OT as well as the NT is based on Davidic authorship and a date of composition in the tenth century BC.”
W. J. Paul, “The Order of Melchizedek (Ps 110:4 and Heb 7:3),” Westminster Theological Journal 49 (1987): 202.
Christianaudio.com's free audiobook download for the month of August is Basic Christianity by John R. W. Stott.
For more information or to get your download go here.
