This coming semester I’m teaching one of my favorite courses, Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament. In preparation I’ve already begun reading up again on things ancient Jewish. The books on the Second Temple period that I’m having students read as background are two brief introductions: Lester Grabbe, An Introduction to Second Temple Judaism (T & T Clark, 2010) and Shaye J.D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (2nd ed,WJK, 2006) In the forward to Cohen’s first addition, Wayne... Read more

“No other God have I but thee, born in a manger, died on a tree” – Martin Luther. Read more

Over at the Times Literary Supplement, Tom Wright review three books on Jesus by Benedict XVI, Maurice Casey, and Bruce Fisk. He regards these books as pre-modern, modern, and post-modern. A rather amusing review of three very different books about Jesus. Wright concludes: Despite their radical differences, these three books share one positive feature and one disturbing one. First, all stress (against one recent strand of opinion) that Jesus and his followers were steeped in the Jewish Scriptures, and understood... Read more

After the manifold comments from pagans in my last post on Christmas as a triumph over Paganism, I need to explain why I don’t find paganism an attractive religious option. The best way to do that is through a clip of the Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks movie Dragnet. Note carefully what P.A.G.A.N stands for! Read more

Yes, we’ve all heard the JW, Free Presbyterian, and Puritan arguments that the 25th of December was originally a pagan festival to celebrate the birth of the sun god Sol Invictus, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, “the birthday of the unconquered sun,” therefore, Christians should not celebrate Christmas because it is a pagan holiday. There might be some truth to this. The 12th century  Syrian bishop Jacob Bar-Salibi wrote: “It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same... Read more

Further evidence that apocalypticism and salvation history cannot be played off against each other in Paul’s letters, this time from N.T. Wright on Galatians: “There is a current fashion in Pauline studies of playing off ‘covenantal’ categories against ‘apocalyptic’ ones. Since I have myself stressed the importance of ‘covenant’ in Paul, let it be said here, and back up by the argument of this essay, that I believe in the essential apocalyptic nature of Paul’s covenantal theology, and vice versa. ‘Apocalyptic’, rightly... Read more

We’ve come to the beginning of the fourth week of Advent. We’ve been celebrating it with our two 4-year old twins, Zion and Mary. This week we hit about 4 of the 7 days, not too bad. The script for our Advent devotion is pretty simple: light the candles, read and talk about a Bible verse, sing a Christmas carol,  say the “O Gracious Light” hymn, blow out the candles. It’s always a bustle of activity figuring out whose going... Read more

I’ve been reading John Howard Yoder’s book Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World. It was unintentional, however providential, that the book, which focuses on the mission and politics of the church, was chosen in close proximity to the engagement with Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s book What’s the Mission of the Church? The two books are a contrast in visions of the nature, purpose and focus of the church. Both perspectives, however distant, are... Read more

I’ve always mused over the question: Did the church “discover” or “create” the canon? On the one hand, the formation of the canon was not simply a haphazard or even political decision to impose a body of literature on a diverse church. There was already in circulation a body of literature – Evangelium, Paulinum, Apostolos, Apocalypse plus other writings like the Didache and Shepherd of Hermas – that were venerated as sacred by many persons in the early church, precisely... Read more

Over at MailOnline, Peter Hitchens (an evangelical Anglican) writes a tribute to his brother Christopher Hitchens, praising his brother’s courage. He writes about their childhood and how the two became closer in Christopher’s final days. We got on surprisingly well in the past few months, better than for about 50 years as it happens. At such times one tends to remember childhood more clearly than at others, though I have always had a remarkably clear memory of much of mine.... Read more