J. Todd Billings, in The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture ,  is seeking to explain how to read the Bible according to a theological method. This approach is against what can be called primitivism, and I’m persuaded that most Bible scholars are primitivists and I’m also convinced [...]

J. Todd Billings, in The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture ,  is seeking to explain the new “theological interpretation of Scripture.” This approach is heavy on “theology” and critical of the more pragmatic approaches — how does this passage speak of business practices.  Here’s another major point [...]

Reading the Bible is both easier than ever before, because of all the resources available, and more complex, because of all the resources available. One could argue that the oldest method of Bible reading is now back on the front burner, and the method can be called the “theological interpretation of Scripture.”  In the last [...]

No passage in the New Testament ever describes the groups it assumes everyone knows. Yet, we beg for those descriptions and so scholars over the years have sketched and re-sketched, and then discarded and reconstructed what can be known about those groups. The most recent, and thoroughly readable — and every church library needs this [...]

Along with Alan Hauser (Appalachian State University) and Jonathan Klawans (Boston University), I am co-editor of the journal Currents in Biblical Research. This journal can be read to keep up with “what’s going on?” in Old Testament studies, Judaism studies, and New Testament studies. The publisher just offered to us a 30% discount by contacting [...]

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 [...]