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Q. On p. 77 you say that Genesis 2-3 is describing historical events in figurative language. I agree. I presume that you would also say that Genesis 2-3 is describing historical persons using figurative language. I do not find the argument very persuasive that Paul or Jesus would think they were drawing what is obviously an historical comparison between the historical Jesus and Adam but need not have thought Adam was anything other than a literary figure in a story…. Read more

1971. I remember it all too well. And I was only seven miles from where the action in this film took place, in Durham N.C. Though some schools, such as my high school in High Point N.C. had been integrated in the late 60s, Durham had managed to avoid that until 1971. Ann Atwater (who passed recent in 2016) and C.J. Ellis (who passed in 2005) were all over the TV news as well as the front page of the… Read more

I To see the rain coming falling down Like tears of angels to the ground And feel the helplessness of loss Unable or unwilling to count the cost. I did not see what others glimpsed there and then Nor did I mourn like merely mortal men I was his mother first to last And from the outset knew the die was cast. To speak against the shouting of the crowds And hear the dereliction cry so loud To watch the… Read more

To see the love here in its labours lost our eyes must grow accustomed to the dark. They see it best who sorrow at his side, the mother and the friend who loved him most. They see his harrowed flesh, the blood, the dirt. They feel the pangs that wrench him from the wood and hurl him back, torn, tethered by the nails. They hear his silent thirsting for his God. The darkness darker than the dread of death descends… Read more

Q. You argue that being in the image of God is something conveyed by God to a group of human beings at some juncture. You call it a status. I don’t agree with this, any more than I agree with the Catholic notion that the image=the soul which was infused at some point into a person or persons, making them ‘in the image’. The problem it seems to me is twofold: 1) the Hebrew says they were created that way,… Read more

Q. On p. 51 you rightly describe Yahweh as not gendered and not sexually active, unlike the description of various if not all other ANE deities. Yet somehow God ends up being called Father, though that specific language is actually rare in the OT and plentiful in the NT. Chris Seitz has suggested that the father language is linked to the creator language. He is father because he is the origin of all human beings, whereas in the NT God… Read more

Q. G. E. Wright of Harvard fame used to talk about how the Hebrews took pagan mythological ideas and demythologized them. He concludes (as does B. Childs later I believe) that the Hebrews were not a myth making people. What is your view on these things? A. Of course it depends on how you define myth, but I would say that the Bible takes what we would call mythological ideas from the surrounding nations and applies them to God often… Read more

Q. It seems obvious from the literary artistry of the creation accounts (including rhythm and rhyme—e.g tohu wubohu) that the author is not attempting to give us a scientific description of exactly how creation happened. Further, why would God download a scientific description on a pre-scientific people who would only be befuddled by it? It seems odd that many conservative Christians feel like the Bible must be evaluated in modern terms based on our own modern ways of viewing the… Read more

Q. At one point in the first chapter you say ‘genre triggers reading strategy’. But how exactly is one to discern when the author is speaking figuratively and when more literally if this is ‘theological history’? I agree there is considerable figurative language in the Gen. 1-3 account, but it also seems clear the author, like Jesus and Paul later, sees Adam and Eve as ancient historical persons. A. With all due respect, I’m afraid I don’t agree that Jesus… Read more