In this post we are dealing with the chapter by Prof. T.M. Lemnos, yet another OT professor (of which there is a plurality in this study, with NT scholars under-represented) whose concern is about the interface between weapon and hunting images combined with sexual imagery in the OT.  The chapter is entitled “Israelite Bows and American Guns”.  She is right that the representation of these things involves a variety of mingled together factors, and hyper-masculinity comes into the picture... Read more

One of the more shocking moments I had in the past few years was when I was invited to speak at a major evangelical university in Virginia and was in the student union and there were sign up tables there— right next to the ‘sign up for a short term mission to share the love of Jesus’ table, was a table signing students up to be members of the NRA. Which of these things is not like the other?  But... Read more

https://youtu.be/PFc31CKahbw Read more

Brent Strawn, a friend and colleague who formerly taught at Asbury with me, and then at Candler, and now is Professor of OT at Duke Divinity School has written the first major essay in this volume about the various ways people have interpreted Joshua, sometimes even as a justification for God’s people to do violence to other human beings.  The title of his chapter is “Projecting on Joshua: You Cannot Worship both God and Glock”. The major point of the... Read more

This particular post is an exercise in hermeneutics, as a ground-clearing exercise before going into the various essays in the volume edited by Chris Hays and C.L. Crouch (Westminister/J. Knox, 2021).  In the first place, what the OT says about human produced violence and what the NT says about the matter is not the same.  And this is true in spite of the fact that the ten commandments says clearly ‘no killing’ or at least ‘no murder’ and various prophets... Read more

The precis for this book on Amazon reads as follows: “Using the Bible as the foundational source and guide, while also bringing contemporary sociological data to the conversation, seven biblical scholars and theologians construct a powerful dialogue about gun violence in America, concluding that guns are incompatible with the God of Christian Scripture. God and Guns is the first book to argue against gun culture from a biblical studies perspective. Bringing the Bible into conversation with contemporary sociological data, the volume breaks... Read more

Egypt-Israel-Turkey-2022     There’s still time to sign up for the tour which begins May 17th in Istanbul.  See the link above for info.   BW3 Read more

Susan Hill’s Simon Serrailler  series keeps rolling along, and in opinion this is the best one so far.  The focus continues to be on the dynamic duo of brother and sister, the latter being Dr. Cat Deerborn, and their extended family.  This novel focuses on the burgeoning drug problem in England, and how well organized drug rings have become, even to the point of the sickening practice of recruiting and entrapping mere children nine years old and  up to do... Read more

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We are now nine novels into the spinoff series from the very popular Falco series, only in these novels the detective in question is the adopted daughter of Falco and Helena Justina, found as a street child in Britain, Flavia Albia.  The series started out a little too stridently with Flavia sounding like a mad-at-the-world modern feminist, but predictably, Lindsey Davis, who is a great writer found her groove, and the series has been percolating along quite nicely ever since. ... Read more