When I was in seminary, there were two or three books that totally transformed how I understood the Bible and theology. One of them is N.T. Wright’s, What Saint Paul Really Said (1997). That book introduced to me a view of what the “gospel” is that took my breath away. To think, the gospel is not about “me and my salvation,” but something much grander and that was in continuity with the story of Israel! That was news to me.... Read more

As promised, this is my second post, interacting with Bruce Fisk’s A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jesus (Baker, 2011). Check out the Blog Tour participants and posts thus far this week HERE. This time around, I want to address how Fisk (through “Norm”) tackles the matter of the Gospels genre. Here we go…. When you sift through the whole narrative journey of “Norm,” one of the most interesting points that Fisk repeatedly returns to is that the Gospels need to be understood... Read more

BTB – Theme of “Social Memory” Read more

Take one part autobiography, one part historical fiction, one part atlas, one part history of Jesus studies, one part political commentary, one part history of religion, one part “use of the old in the new testament” guide, one part “comparison of Synoptic Gospels,” one part introduction to Biblical archaeology, one part “the Jerusalem equivalent to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” and one part “Who’s Who in historical Jesus scholarship” – and you have Bruce Fisk’s stimulating A Hitchhiker’s Guide to... Read more

If you are interested in our (Seattle Pacific University) Lectio guided Scriptural study on Joshua and Judges, the second podcast/lecture is up. Read more

HERE An interesting dialogue on eating meat… Read more

I have had Logos Software for a good while (about 6-7 years) and I basically have used it to consult commentaries. It has streamlined its searching and cross-referencing features in recent years to make it easier, but essentially it has served me as an online library. When I heard about the addition of the Perseus Collection of classical texts I thought, “Big deal, so they added some more free books…” Boy, I did not realize what they were offering! Now... Read more

When I was in Seminary, it seemed liked there were 4 kinds of students. The “ministry” students. The “Bible” students. The “counseling” students. And the “theology” students. I was a “Bible” student, so I took a lot of language courses (Aramaic, Akkadian, Latin, German, French, Greek/Hebrew, etc.). I took exegesis courses. Bible backgrounds. Hermeneutics. Advanced hermeneutics…And I avoided “theology” courses like the plague. No Luther. No “systematics” (except what I had to take). No “Christology” course (because it wasn’t taught by... Read more

Yesterday, I received in the mail the first official issue of the new Eisenbrauns periodical Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters. This first issue is rather long with 8 excellent articles (two of them reviews of Doug Campbell’s Deliverance of God, and a third Campbell’s response). The first article is the “sample” article we previewed at SBL – Susan Eastman’s lucid, creative, and illuminating study of Philippians 2:6-11 from a theatrical perspective. My favorite article in this issue... Read more

New Scottish Journal of Theology issue (64.4) Read more