Here are our big questions in this series of posts:
How do we move beyond the Bible? Should we? Better yet: Since we have to, how do we move beyond the Bible into our world but do this biblically? This is the concern of Zondervan's new Counterpoint book edited by Gary Meadors:
Four Views on Moving beyond the Bible to Theology (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology)
. As I said Tuesday, this book touches on themes I discuss in more popular form in
The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible
.
What do you think of Doriani's take on gambling? I wonder if the stock market, etc, are seen as gambling?
The first model was that of Walter Kaiser and he called his approach "principlizing" which moves from particulars to timeless principles back to particulars in a Ladder of Abstraction. The second approach comes from Daniel Doriani, who wrote a nice exposition of James, in what he calls the "redemptive-historical approach." He affirms the authority, sufficiency and clarity of Scripture.
I received this notification of six new scholarships at the University of St Andrews in the School of Divinity, which involves teaching a language class in the second and third year of the scholarship.
St Mary's College, The School of
Divinity
Six New
Scholarships to Celebrate 600 Years of Divinity in St Andrews
The School of Divinity at St Mary's
College, St Andrews, Scotland is offering six PhD scholarships to be taken up
in the Autumn of 2010--or as soon as possible thereafter--to work in the
following fields:
- The Matthew Black Scholarship: for a student interested in Old
Testament / Hebrew Bible
- The Donald M. Baillie Scholarship: for a student interested in
Theology;
- The Richard Bauckham Scholarship: for a student interested in
New Testament;
- The Emanuel Tov Scholarship: for a student interested in Old
Testament / Hebrew Bible Textual Criticism;
- The Queen Margaret of Scotland Scholarship: for a student
interested in any field of Divinity;
- The Lady Kenmure Scholarship: for a student interested in any
field of Divinity.
The scholarships cover home fees for a UK or
EU student, or a contribution of around £3500 per annum towards overseas fees.
An additional stipend of £3000 (or £1000 for the fourth scholarship) is offered
to the recipients. Recipients of the scholarships (1-4) will be asked to teach
one language class in their second and third year of residency or do equivalent
work.
The successful candidates will join a
rapidly expanding School of Divinity postgraduate program.
Candidates for these scholarships are
required to fill out the normal post graduate application forms. Special
attention will be given to the PhD proposal.
Further details can be obtained from: Ms
Margot Clements, Postgraduate Liaison, School of Divinity, St Mary's College,
St Andrews, Fife KY16 9JU, Scotland, Email: Mc41@st-andrews.ac.uk
The closing date for applications is January
15, 2010.
Many today admit the need to have multiple voices at the table when important subjects are discussed, and one such "table" is Bible study: and the "voices" are commentaries.
We fool ourselves thinking we've got genuine diversity when we examine Romans through the eyes of Tom Wright and Ernst Kaesemann and Doug Moo. Yes, they differ but there's nothing like stirring the pot by bringing genuine diversity to the table.
The series is designed for preachers and for preaching. The commentary emerges from experience; it is wise; it is conservative theologically and shaped for traditional theology in Africa; and it will prove itself to be valuable for cross-cultural contexts. If the substance of these commentaries reflects common evangelicalism, the specific applications take us into the heart of Africa's church experiences. I will use this commentary whenever I work in the Pastorals.
We've now completed our commentary listing, but commentaries will continue to be produced so I will use the Book Comments to update commentaries. I want to mention two that have recently crossed my desk.
First, there is a brand new series from Wipf and Stock -- Cascade Books -- edited by Michael Bird and Craig Keener, with an impressive list of assigned authors. The series is called the New Covenant Commentary Series. The first one I've seen and read is by Michael Bird:
Colossians and Philemon (New Covenant Commentary)
. Noteworthy features of the series: diversity (a list of global scholars), a focus on paragraph level instead of verse-by-verse level, and the authors are commissioned to ponder how the Bible impacts new covenant communities today.
Michael Bird is noteworthy in his grasp of contemporary scholarship and its significance for theologizing, and his new Colossians commentary exhibits that skill of his. Furthermore, though a younger scholar, he's learned to see the forest instead of getting lost in the trees. He concludes the letter concerns a form of Jewish mysticism and works his way through this letter with deftness. Preachers will find this brief commentary to be a plentiful sketch of what needs to be known in order to move from text to sermon.
John Goldingay's 3volume theology of the Old (First) Testament is now complete. I blogged through volume one way back when but volume two wore me down ... Yet, my courage has been refreshed and I will begin volume 3 in December or January. Here's my invitation to purchase and read along with us -- I'm guessing either one post per week or one post every other week. A bit of a class on OT theological ethics.
The third volume (
Old Testament Theology: Israel's Life
) is about Israel's life. Hence, he divides the book into:
Living with God
Living with One Another
Living with Ourselves
Here are some topics in each: Obeying and revering and praising YHWH; marriage and family and community and city and kingdom; and he has a section on spirituality -- Godlikeness, holiness and purity, insight, suffering as well as sections on servants and leaders. And this is only a sample of what is found in this gem of a book.
Manfred Brauch, now retired from many years of teaching at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now Palmer), calls us to a more serious approach to Scripture in order to end the all-too-common abuse of Scripture. Scripture is used for everything by everyone...
I just spent a bundle of time with John H. Walton, who is the General Editor of a brand new series on the Old Testament, and it is a series we desperately need. This new series is a commentary unlike...
In our series on young Christian authors, it's a bit unfair to include Margaret Feinberg -- not because she's not young, which she is, but because she's written already a bundle of good books. Her newest book is a treat....
We are in a conversation and discussion about John Walton's (professor at Wheaton) new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.Proposition 9 is another big one:The seven days of Genesis 1 relate to...
We are in a conversation and discussion about John Walton's (professor at Wheaton) new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.Proposition 8 of Walton's book, and one that can reorient everything one sees...
We are in a conversation and discussion about John Walton's (professor at Wheaton) new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.Each chp in Walton's book is a "proposition" and today we look at...
We are in a conversation and discussion about John Walton's (professor at Wheaton) new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.Proposition 6: Days 4 to 6 install functionaries."... in most cases the functionaries...
We are in a conversation and discussion about John Walton's (professor at Wheaton) new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.What about Day 1 to Day 3 in Genesis 1? Is this about...
We are in a conversation and discussion about John Walton's (professor at Wheaton) new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.One reason why this book will be read, digested, and influential is because Walton...
What do you tell your son if he asks for discernment about what to do for a vocation? Michael Jenkins, in Called to Be Human: Letters to My Children on Living a Christian Life ,advises his son through a life...
When it comes to commentaries on Ephesians, I still turn first to the Ephesians commentary that I first learned from so much... Markus Barth, but I'm getting ahead of myself. This series is intended to help pastors who are preparing...
Galatians was the first book I studied when, as a high schooler, a claim on my life was experienced. I tell more of this story in the opening to my own commentary on Galatians (Galatians (The NIV Application Commentary) ),...
Ah, Second Corinthians. One of the most formative classes I had in seminary was Murray Harris' class on 2 Corinthians, and I've paid attention to the commentaries ever since. I begin with C.K. Barrett because I learned so much...
1 Corinthians doesn't have as many good commentaries as does 2 Corinthians, but these are my top four picks:I begin with Gordon Fee: The First Epistle to the Corinthians . Then I back up in time and read C.K. Barrett,...
'); //--> In college a professor of mine told me he realized he had 40+ commentaries on Romans and that he decided that 10 was enough -- so he unloaded 30. It is not hard to accumulate commentaries on...
I don't see Michael Gorman's outstanding work on Paul cited enough; and therefore not enough are interacting with him. I say this because Gorman has become one of the most fruitful, irenic, and astute theologians of Paul in the contemporary...
Andrew Marin has earned the right to be heard about gays and the Church. Why? His book, Love Is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation With the Gay Community , tells the story of what I am now calling the...
We will begin this Friday and then next week two new conversations. One will be about Andrew Marin's new book about homosexuality and the Church, called Love Is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation With the Gay Community . And the...
I get asked this about once a week, often in an e-mail: "What is the New Perspective on Paul?" Let me answer that question with three brief lines, but first I provide what inspired me to think through the NPP...
There was a time, and not that long ago, that more than one good commentary on Acts was hard to find. There were some old ones, and FF Bruce's two (very different) commentaries were consulted, but it ended there. But...
Let's say you want to know what the earliest churches and Christians were like. Is there a book that puts it all together? that sorts out all the scholarship? one that is up-to-date? When I was a student, we turned...
There are many today who advocate specific diets -- more organic food, no pork, no shrimp, etc -- on the basis of the Bible. One can go back to the Bible for such things to carry out a number of...
I don't know how long it lasted, but it had to be at least twenty years. Famed Wheaton professor Merrill C. Tenney's two books on the historical context and the contents of the New Testament were standard textbooks. I got...
In our series on Bible readers, based on our book The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible , we have taken some brief looks at the bad habits or exaggerations in our reading of the Bible. I want...
Who then are the Third Way thinkers and writers? The other day I accidentally posted this and then took it down when I realized it, but Andy Rowell (see below) caught it first and contributed a wonderful set of links...
How do you read Genesis 32:22-32? Today I want to return to an issue I mentioned in our post about the vigorous conversation over reading the Bible theologically. In that post I mentioned Frances Young's wonderful book, Brokenness and Blessing:...
Christopher Wright openly and honestly admits that those of us who adhere to a classic form of belief in God -- God is good, holy, loving, sovereign -- have a problem: evil. Evil is a problem for any thinking Christian...
If you do and you have heard about "aspect" or "aspect theory" or "verbal aspect" and you wonder what in the world is going on, I urge you to read this book: Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek. If...
I'm holding in my hands at this very moment the original German edition of Gerhard Kittel's famous Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. I've got volume 4. The foreword, written by Kittel himself, is preceded by a page of German...
How many times have you asked or been asked this question: How can I learn about the Dead Sea Scrolls in a way that I can understand what is going on? Books about the DSS tend to be very academic...
I'm happy to announce that that our new book, Blue Parakeet, has "landed" at Amazon and local bookstores. We'd really appreciate it if those who have posted reviews on their blogs would carry those over to Amazon and post them...
Teachers are always looking for textbooks, and good textbooks are hard to find. Those two points come from 25 years of teaching. Textbooks have to complement lectures and class sessions, and most of us don't want to use a textbook...
The most important thing that will come of Rob Bell's newest book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, is that Christians will be given an approach to reading the Bible that both makes sense of the Bible and makes sense of...
It's a good idea when seasoned scholars produce a synthetic book that puts a life of study and writing into one big bundle, which is what I. Howard Marshall did when he wrote New Testament Theology. It's an even better...
I don't know if you heard this, but The Bible Experience -- the audio recording of the Bible by Hollywood African Americans -- won a huge award. (It is on Audio DVD and MP3.) It has won the 2007 Audio...
I wasn't able to find it online (oops), but Christianity Today's most recent print edition has a piece that I'd like to talk about. Daniel Harrell, a pastor at Park Street Church in Boston (say, "bah-ston"), got 21 folks to...
This is cool. Codex Sinaiticus, one of the most storied manuscripts of the entire New Testament and one of the earliest and best manuscripts as well, is now online at this site. When I was doing my PhD and our...
Our daughter, Laura, asked the other day about a study Bible and I recommended this one: TNIV Study Bible. What are your favorite study Bibles? OK, I messed up. I wasn't thinking -- I recommended to her the TNIV, not...
If chp 1 of Christopher Wright, The Mission of God, took issue with various ways Christians have tried to make sense of a missional calling, chp 2 explains his own big ideas ... and, again, drink these in because they...
I begin this new series on Christopher Wright's book, The Mission of God, with a view to helping us (1) understand the Bible better and (2) understand "missional" better. I've mentioned Wright's book before, and I've mentioned that we will...
Some thought Barack Obama's comment about which passages we should choose if our country was to follow the Bible was messing with the authority of Scripture. What wasn't clear in the criticisms of Obama was this: it was when Obama...
When someone brings together salvation and community (Israel, Church), I'm listening. Chris Wright does just that in a new book, but before I get to it, a brief note. When I first began teaching our survey of the Bible course...
Roger Omanson's excellent A Textual Guide to the GNT does something that many of us have known we need. For years those who are curious about the apparatus -- the footnotes to the Greek NT -- have had only two...
We are working through John Goldingay's multi-volumed "First Testament" theology, and we are in volume 2 -- Israel's Faith. The first theme in Israel's faith is God, and this chp -- 151 pages long! -- is worth the price of...
This series and this post are by RJS; and we are glad Scot is back – because the challenges confronting us in this chapter are up his alley not mine. Come on, many ask us today, you can't really take...
Today I examine Jesus’ prayer life from The Prayers of Jesus in Deeper Connections. Prayer was the backbone of Jesus’ life and ministry. From his baptism to his crucifixion, the Gospels portray Jesus as a man of prayer who knew...
Healer of diseases. Master of nature. Conqueror of demons and death. Jesus not only preached the Kingdom of God in word, but he demonstrated it in power through his miraculous deeds. The Miracles of Jesus in Deeper Connections reveal God’s...
Today I would like to talk about the Prodigal Son study from the The Parables of Jesus in the Deeper Connections series. After an introduction from the Gentile city of Susita, on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee,...
In the introductions to each of the Deeper Connections 18 Bible studies—shot in various locations in Israel—one can see the hills from which Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount, see the desert in which he found refuge from the...
As a former doctoral student of Scot’s, I’ve been asked to write about a new DVD Bible study series that I edited called Deeper Connectionsfor the next five days. There are three DVDs (and participant’s guides) in the series: The...
Well, Goldingay's 2d chp (Israel's Faith (OT Theology, vol. 2)) is bogging me down, but this chp has a section that is a virtual open theism statement. So, here are some thoughts from the chp... "God thus has a plan...
John Goldingay ends the preface to volume 2 of his OT Theology (OT Theology: Israel's Faith) with a zinger that I find to be so, so true: he gives credit to readers who have saved him "from some of my...
OK, it's not the first day of the month but I want you to know that April 1 (no fooling) I will post the first in an 8-part [maybe 10-part] series -- once a month, on the first day of...
We come to the 11th and final chapter of John Goldingay's Old Testament theology -- OT Theology: Israel's Gospel. Goldingay takes cuts through the First Testament rather than building a synthetic theology; his books provide an excellent example of narrative...
I mentioned this before, but just in case you haven't heard, there is a wonderful reading of the Bible -- with some background effects -- in The Bible Experience. I've enjoyed it while driving, and it is now with mp3...
(Say the Jesus Creed morning and evening during Lent.) I didn't get home early enough to post our usual Friday is for Friends, so instead... You may have heard about the hermeneutics quiz I drafted up for Leadership magazine; of...
(Say the Jesus Creed morning and evening during Lent.) Here's the offer. I will send a copy of Donald McKim, Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, to the first person who can stump the professor. At what? Here's the deal: When...
(Say the Jesus Creed morning and evening during Lent.) OK, I don't normally get so corny for the titles of posts, but "B3" is how I often refer in my notes to Ben Witherington. B3 writes commentaries 4U. Ben is...
(Say the Jesus Creed morning and evening during Lent.) I'm old enough to remember a story you may not know. When the Anchor Bible commentary series got off the ground, it was designed to be a new, ecumenical translation with...
(Say the Jesus Creed morning and evening during Lent.) One of the most mind-numbing as well as frustrating things about biblical studies is learning the "names" and "ideas" of the major interpreters. So, for instance, Augustine or Aquinas or Luther...
I missed doing the 10th chp of John Goldingay's Israel's Gospel (OT Theology) in the month of January. I have to admit it: his chps are well-nigh endless and their lack of coherence a bit annoying to me. Still, Goldingay's...
It is often said, fairly or not, that we all "pick and choose" when it comes to living out the Bible. In your opinion, what is the most obvious example of "picking and choosing"? (For instance, picking head coverings for...
Saturday I was up in bitterly cold Minneapolis where I addressed a gathering of Covenant pastors and lay folks on reading the Bible in a postmodern context. This was the first time I've spoken about the stuff I've been writing...
A, B, or C? [We are picking covers now for the book; the book will be published next Fall.] A B C...
I mentioned this once, but I have to mention it again. Just in case you haven't listened to The Bible Experience, I think it is a must. As I am driving I often listen to this recording of the Bible...
John Goldingay closes chp 9 of Israel's Gospel (OT Theology) with this statement, a summing up insight into how First Testament writers understood history and how we might understand our own: "The church in Europe lives in exile; is may...
If this letter becomes as controversial as the letter on Monday then I'll have to rethink my strategies! Scot, Hope you don't mind this completely out of the blue email from a stranger, but I read Jesus Creed this last...
Nov 30 and Dec 1, at Northern Seminary here in the suburbs of Chicago, The Ancient Evangelical Future Conference and the Grow Center are hosting an event dedicated to the primacy of the biblical narrative. There will be some papers...
Attending the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego isn't the worst of gigs, but it was surely no vacation. A brief rundown and then some thoughts on the books. My roommates this year, Boaz Johnson and Kermit Zarley, showed...
Most of us have read enough Bible to know texts that make us uncomfortable, texts like ignoring Hagar or sacrificing Jephthah's daughter or patriarchs behaving badly. But most of us do the same thing: ignore them and hope no one...
In the 1980s, alongside the rise of narrative and literary studies of the Bible -- which it so happens made people readers of the Bible again and not just archaeologists digging behind the texts, was the rise of the multi-disciplinary...
In the 80s the methods of Gospel Criticism were pushed off the table in academic circles to make room for the surge and flowering of a bundle of disciplines that reshaped Gospels studies into texts that needed to be studied...
Today we look at Gospel Criticism, the methods used in studies of the Gospel from the beginning of the 20th Century until the hey-day of redaction criticism in the 70s and 80s. Here are the basic streams that flowed into...
If you were to attend the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and either wander through the bookstalls or spend an hour or so with the book that lists sessions, times, and locations, one thing would surely strike...
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