The Mission Impossible films came long after the TV program of the same name had primed the pump between 1966 and 1973. It was popular, but like various movie franchises, they began life either as TV shows, or as comic books, or both actually (for instance in the case of Superman). As for this episode, it was not as fitting an ending as the end of the James Bond films involving Daniel Craig, with Tom Cruise refusing to die, and... Read more
One of the best and most interesting translations of the Wisdom Literature is Robert Alter’s. As he points out, because maxims and proverbs are a compact form of wisdom, in the Hebrew it may amount to very few words, which when translating necessarily involves some interpretation, as we shall see. Wisdom literature was common in the ANE, and indeed, if you look at the end of the book of Proverbs there is incorporated wisdom from various foreign sources, including from... Read more
Some of the most neglected literature in all of Scripture is Wisdom literature, which includes Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job in the canon and later Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon, all of which influenced the teaching of Jesus and Paul. In this post I want to talk generally about the nature of this literature, and then we will work through some samples from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Speaking generally, wisdom literature in the Jewish tradition involved sages studying the behavior of humans,... Read more
1.READING OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS AS IF THEY WERE NT TEXTS. TO GIVE BUT TWO EXAMPLES, THE ‘ANGEL OF THE LORD’ WAS NOT CHRIST SHOWING UP IN OT SALVATION HISTORY. WHY NOT? FOR STARTERS, THE SON OF GOD WAS IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ONTOLOGICAL CATEGORY THAN ANGELS, AS HEBREWS 1 MAKES PERFECTLY CLEAR. FOR ANOTHER THING, OT INDIVIDUALS SHOULD NOT BE EVALUATED ON THE BASIS OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER STANDARDS. ABRAHAM, ISAAC, JACOB, DAVID, SOLOMON ARE NOT CHRISTIANS BEFORE THEIR TIME.... Read more
A very good illustration of the value of this series is James Harrison’s discussion of the phrase ‘friend of Caesar’ (pp. 157ff in Vol. 11a). It will be recalled that this phrase comes up in John 19.12. And it is this threat– to go to the Emperor and tell him of how uncooperative Pilate was in the Jesus of Nazareth matter, which would have led to Pilate no longer being in the Emperor’s good graces (having already irritated Tiberius by... Read more
There are few series in Biblical Studies that have gone through a more interesting pilgrimage than the New Documents series. It began as just a project of the Ancient History department of Macquarrie University in Sydney with Greg Horsley overseeing the first five volumes, and Stephen Llewelyn shepherding the second five volumes. The goal was to relate recently discovered manuscripts, ostraca, and inscriptions to the New Testament in some meaningful way. Vols. 1-5 focused on philology, Vol. 6-10 on social... Read more
Here is a limestone inscription about the Sergius Paulus family, who were from Pisidian Antioch, the place Paul visited on his first missionary journey. Notice that at the end of the line the name Sergius is cut off in both the first and the second lines of inscription. If this can happen on a stone inscription, it was all the more likely to happen with fragile papyri. And here is where I mention that ancients were no better than moderns... Read more
My mom was a remarkable woman. She was a college graduate from the school that became UNC-Greensboro though neither of her parents went to college. She became a widely sought after piano teacher, and taught at both Salem and Queens college as well as giving private lessons in her home and playing at churches. She instilled in me and my sister Laura a lifelong love of music— ranging from classical to hymns to rock and roll to jazz to country... Read more
The problem I have with the following is they made the mistake of giving various of these icons perfect teeth, and we know from skeletal remains that was not the case with even the most elite Egyptians, Romans, Greeks. Even with 18th century folks like Ben Franklin or George Washington, George had iron dentures!! Read more
We are now fortunate enough to have several good accounts of the remarkable outpouring of the Spirit in February 2023 at Asbury University, which became a story that spanned the globe within weeks, including thousands of people showing up in Wilmore while it was happening. You have to understand that Wilmore Ky. has a population of just over 5,000 and we now know what would happen if it would suddenly increase by 10 fold— namely utter chaos, but of a... Read more
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