Robert L. Hubbard Jr. and J. Andrew Dearman Introducing the Old Testament Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018. Available from Amazon.com I recently took on responsibility for our first year introductory Old Testament subjects here are Ridley College. One of the first things I did was look back over the reading lists from previous lecturers and raid the library for the textbooks. When it comes to Introductory Old Testament textbooks, turns out there is a dizzying array of great options on the... Read more

I recently preached on 1 Thess 4:13-18, the famous rapture text, and in my study I came across a great quote from Gene Green, recently retired from Wheaton College, and now Academic Dean of North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies, in his 1-2 Thessalonians commentary in the PNTC series. I really liked his comments about what this passage does and does not mean: This teaching was presented to comfort those in grief by connecting the confession of the creed... Read more

A few weeks ago, Ridley College hosted a great conference called Finding Her Voice about and for evangelical women in Christian academia. Keynote speakers were Katya Covrett (Zondervan) and Katy Smith (Church Missionary Society). You can listen to their talks here, and I suggest you do, and please pass them on to any women you know who are in academia or do graduate work in Bible, theology, or Christian Thought. Read more

Over at the Church Times is an excellent interview with Prof Judith Lieu, The Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, about scholarship, her own career, Paul, Marcion, and what people should know about church history. People’s ideas about the Early Church can be a fantasy, ignoring the realities of slavery, which even early Christian writings take for granted, or the restricted roles available for women; and, although we appeal to ideas of family, family meant something very different in that... Read more

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a big Jonathan Edwards fan (Irenaeus is my homeboy!). I’ve always found Edwards elegant yet verbose, passionate while prolix, dry in places though wonderfully dramatic elsewhere. Plus the dude owned slaves which has always bummed me out. However, I’ve been revising Evangelical Theology for a second edition and I have – if only to satisfy my colleague Rhys Bezzant – been reading a fair bit of Edwards of late, and I’m glad I did. I... Read more

Paul B. Duff Jesus Followers in the Roman Empire Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017. Available at Amazon.com This is a helpful book on how the churches were similar and different to the pagan context of the Roman empire. It includes a good summary of Greek culture, Jewish religion, and Roman power; the early years of the Jesus movement; and the spread of Christianity into the eastern Mediterranean. Duff also uses Gal 3:28 as a kind of hermeneutical to examine Judaism, Hellenism,... Read more

Now available for pre-order! The N.T. Wright and Michael Bird DVD, The New Testament You Never Knew, a series of talks about the New Testament! In this 8-session video-based study, leading New Testament scholars, N.T. Wright and Michael Bird, hope to take you on a tour of the New Testament Story, from Galilee to Golgotha, from Jerusalem to Rome. They will look at who Jesus is, the real meaning of his death and resurrection, the expansion of the church in the... Read more

David Smith On Christian Teaching: practicing faith in the classroom Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018. Available at Amazon.com What does it mean to teach ‘Christianly’ (other than perhaps avoiding the use of words like ‘Christianly’)? In On Christian Teaching David Smith answers this question. His interest is not simply in teaching Christian content, or in teaching within a Christian ethos. Instead, Smith argues for an approach to teaching and learning, the pedagogical process itself, that is explicitly shaped by Christian faith.... Read more