The doctor opened the door for a second time while I waited in a small examination room. She apologized for delay; I’d been sitting in the empty room for 15 minutes waiting. Apparently the Infectious Disease specialist was in a meeting. She sighed with force, “Of all days he had a meeting!” My chest X-ray taken just 30 minutes before revealed a foggy substance in my both my lungs, pneumonia. And while pneumonia is a big deal, the fact that... Read more

Over at the Aussie Bible Society website, my Ridley student Sophie Timothy has an interview with my former HTC colleagues Fraser and Dawn Jackson about their ministry in Jos in northern Nigeria. A great read if you want to know about what is happening in Nigeria and what it is like for a missionary working there. Read more

Over at Think, Andrew Wilson sums up 25 bloggers in one sentence. Even yours truly gets a mention: Mike Bird: “You should all be Anglicans, but you can still be both biblically faithful and good-humoured about it, sport.” Plus these: Scot McKnight: “Hey, here’s an interesting leftish quotation that I’m not going to comment on that much, but just park here ambiguously.” Justin Taylor: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel Coalition.” Rachel Held Evans: “You go, girlfriend.” Ben Witherington:... Read more

David A. deSilva The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude: What Earliest Christianity Learned from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha Oxford: OUP, 2012. Available at Amazon.com David deSilva (Ashland Theological Seminary) has produced a book that achieves two key functions. First, it is a great introduction to apocryphal and pseudepigraphal literature (i.e., Ben Sirach, 1 Enoch, Psalms of Solomon, 2 Maccabees, Lives of the Prophets, Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and Testament of Job). Second, it shows the influence of... Read more

Over at his blog, Larry Hurtado reviews Bart Ehrman’s HJBG with some juicy points of affirmation and criticism. On these and a few other matters, in short, Ehrman’s discussion is misinformed, which is curious given that the jacket promotional blurb describes the book as the product of eight years of research and writing.  But, notwithstanding its defects and sometimes slanted handling of matters, it will perhaps have some positive effect.  The general public today is widely unaware of how remarkable were the beliefs... Read more

Thesis 3: The “I” is a composite character. There are echoes of Adam, Israel, and especially God-fearers who tried to live under the law but see in hindsight that they had always failed to keep it. To begin with, there are some striking parallels between Genesis 2–3 and Rom 7:7-25. For instance: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Gen 3:13) and “sin … deceived me and through it killed me” (Rom 7:11). The sequence of sin leading to death (Rom... Read more

Jesus Descended into Hell, Kind of By Justin W. Bass St. Augustine asked in the fifth century, “Who, therefore, but an infidel will deny that Christ was in hell?” (Ep. 164) And in just the last few decades Wayne Grudem wrote an article (reflecting the views of many of the Reformed persuasion today) entitled “He Did not Descend into Hell” (JETS 34 (March 1991)). Who is right, St. Augustine or Wayne Grudem? When in doubt always obey the maxim: Follow... Read more

In traditional Reformed theology there is often posited a strong contrast between Law and Gospel. Gospel tells you how to receive eternal life, Law tells you how to do God’s moral will. Don’t confuse the two, cause you might end up as a legalist. Now if you read Galatians (esp. 3.1-5), you can see how this is exegetically based, as salvation is about God’s work not our own works (though I think the Christ/Torah tension in Galatians is more about... Read more

There is a NT job opening at the prestigious Gordon-Conwell Seminary, looking specifically for but not limited to a Synoptics person. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (www.gordonconwell.edu) announces a tenure track faculty position in the area of New Testament beginning in the fall of 2015. The seminary is an evangelical multi-denominational school with campuses in South Hamilton, Boston, Charlotte and Jacksonville. The school offers M.Div, M.A.,Th.M. and D.Min. degrees. Approximately 2,200 students are enrolled in degree programs at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. The... Read more

Thesis 2: The “I” is not a normal pre-Christian experience of wailing in guilt and then finding a deliverer. As far as we know, Saul of Tarsus did not have a guilt-ridden conscience and was not waiting for a divine messianic figure to die an atoning death to save his troubled soul from the flames of judgment. In an autobiographical passage, Paul claims that as a Pharisee he thought he was “blameless” in regards to the law (Phil 3:8) and his... Read more