While I commend Bailey for his observation that 1 Corinthians “has a carefully designed inner coherence that exhibits precision in composition and admirable grandeur in overall theological concept” (p. 25), the structure he finds in 1 Corinthians owes more to modern interests in ring compositions and chiasms that the largely Gentile audience in Corinth would be unlikely to recognize, especially when one considers this was a document meant to be delivered orally to an audience, many of whom, perhaps most... Read more

What follows in the next ten days, is my extended review and critique of Ken Bailey’s latest book, which won a Christianity Today book award this past year. I have appreciated many of Ken’s interesting insights and perspectives over the years, and nothing I say in this review should be taken to mean that I have changed my mind about that. It is just that this book is not up to the rather high standards he has previously set and... Read more

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It’s nice to see a lad from my home town, High Point N.C. top the Sax poll. Here is what the voters named the top 50 jazz albums with sax as lead instrument. I mostly agree with this list, though I would definitely include a few more recent ones, like Branford Marsalis’ wonderful “Eternal’. I also think Kind of Blue is too far down the list and where in the world is Coltrane’s famous ‘Ballads’ CD? 1. JOHN COLTRANE A... Read more

It is story that is tragic in various ways. How would you like to be in jail and then on trial for forgery, theft, fraud, and then exonerated, and then not be given back the property that was taken from you by the antiquities police? Matthew Kalman, who has kept me up to speed on the developments throughout the trial, and is the only reporter to sit through the whole thing now has a couple of articles in the Jerusalem... Read more

This post is dedicated to someone who taught me a lot about love— my sweet Christy girl, now with the Lord, but born on this day in 1979. I sure do miss you honey. Here is one of the first pictures I have of her when we brought her home from the hospital in Durham England. One of the benefits of reading the NT with the help of Greco-Roman rhetoric is that it allows you to hear the text as... Read more

One of the things I have grown weary of in the last decade or so, is anti-ecclesial rhetoric. What I mean by this is the pitting of the ‘church’ over against Jesus, or ‘the established church’ over against more ‘organic’ models of Christianity (e.g. house churches, and the like). I suppose we all from time to time look for something or someone to blame our problems on, and the Christian church has become something of a punching bag, even for... Read more

Quote of the Day: “They (mis)take lack of charity for zeal, and mutual ignorance for orthodoxy”. — Speaking about the problem of Protestants and Catholics in Ireland (C.S. Lewis, Letters: C.S. Lewis and Don Giovani Calabria Servant Books, 1988, p. 83). Read more

“A self-sufficient human being is sub-human…God has made us so that we will need each other.”— Desmond Tutu (quoted in K. Bailey, Paul through Mediterranean Eyes, (IVP, 2011), p. 344). Read more

Perhaps by now you have seen an episode of the TV show Swamp People. Pretty gnarly for sure. But those folks don’t hold a candle to the real swamp people in the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild. Here is a brief synopsis of this film— “In a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee, a six-year-old girl exists on the brink of orphanhood. Buoyed by her childish optimism and... Read more