Bryan D Estelle Echoes of Exodus: Tracing a Biblical Motif. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018. Available at IVP By Andrew Judd (Lecturer in Old Testament, Ridley College) Echoes of Exodus shows how the exodus event develops as a persistent literary motif throughout the canon of scripture. The indefinite article in the subtitle is important. Bryan Estelle has taken to heart James Barr’s warning that setting out to distil the theology of the whole Bible is a ridiculous undertaking, and... Read more

Helen Bond Jesus: A Very Brief History  London: SPCK, 2017. Available at Amazon.com Prof. Helen Bond (Edinburgh Uni) has written a very brief and yet concisely rich introduction to the historical Jesus (I’m guessing this is a slightly shorter version of her book The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed [London: T&T Clark, 2012]).  The book design is brilliant with the cut out “J” in the front cover revealing an iconic picture of Jesus. Bond provides a good overview of the evidence... Read more

Over at RBL, Nijay Gupta has a great review of God and the Faithfulness of Paul, a collection of (mostly) European essays interacting with N.T. Wright’s massive Paul and the Faithfulness of God. What makes God and the Faithfulness of Paul unique is not only its length but also its contributors. It is well-known (and made explicit in the introduction) that on the subject of Paul’s thought Anglophone and Deutschophone scholarship do not interact often enough (see 5). Several prominent German scholars feature in God... Read more

Markus Barth (Rediscovering the Lord’s Supper, 45-46) makes a good point that communion celebrates the death and resurrection of Jesus. “Those celebrating the Lord’s Supper know the pain and shame, the horror and scandal, of Christ’s death. However, they rejoice in the crucifixion and praise the slaughtered Lamb because God has raised him from the dead the crucified Son and has accepted his intercession by enthroning him at God’s right hand. In Paul’s theology, as much as in the message of John,... Read more

In a game-changing move, Zondervan has launched Master Lectures, its own streaming service, kind of like Audible or Netflix, where one pays a monthly subscription of $14.99 and then gets full access to a suite of lectures and teaching series by leading evangelical scholars, teachers, pastors, and well-known speakers. Here’s the advantages of the service: – Thousands of high-quality video lectures on the Bible and theology – New video lectures added every other week – Free for the first 14... Read more

The Episcopalian form of church governance centres on the bishop as the fulcrum of faith, order, and ministry.[1] This form of church government is practiced by the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and Lutheran churches (in some Methodist churches too, but the bishop is not considered above the clergy and functions more like a superintendent). The diocese is the basic unit with a single bishop overseeing a number of priests and parishes. The bishop is distinct from and above the priests... Read more

I attended an Anglican ordination service in Melbourne just over a week ago, communion was served (as we Anglicans do), and I noticed a Middle Eastern lady wearing a headscarf, quite possibly Muslim, returning from receiving the elements and quietly weeping. Now, I don’t know who she was or what was happening in her heart, but I got the impression this was a very important moment for her, perhaps even a point of conversion. In any case, such experiences raise,... Read more