The Current Revival at Asbury University: Sensing the Presence of God and 4 Principles from the Past

Last updated on: February 22, 2023 at 5:22 am By B. J. Oropeza

Students are worshipping God, praying for one another, reading Scripture, and confessing sins at this event. This is quickly turning into what some are calling the Asbury Revival, and visitors around the globe are presently coming into chapels at Asbury to experience it. On Wednesday, February 8, a routine chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky continued for hours and hours, and it continues on now, non-stop, more than a week later. Both the university and seminary chapels are... Read more

An Intertextual Commentary on Romans: In Conversation with Channing Crisler

Last updated on: February 19, 2023 at 1:52 pm By B. J. Oropeza

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I recently had the privilege of interviewing Channing Crisler on his current multi-volume work, An Intertextual Commentary on Romans (Pickwick Publications). Dr. Channing has written three volumes thus far—the first on Romans 1:1–4:25, the second on Romans 5:1–8:39, and third on Romans 9:1–11:36. This post will cover his first volume. Dr. Channing L. Crisler is Associate Professor of New Testament at Anderson University, South Carolina. He has authored Reading Romans as Lament (Pickwick); Echoes of Lament in the Christology of... Read more

Who are the sons of God in Genesis 6? Sethians, Rulers, or Fallen Angels?

Last updated on: March 7, 2023 at 12:14 am By B. J. Oropeza

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We read in Genesis 6 that when the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, they took (for sexual union) whichever ones they decided. This happened in the days before the Flood of Noah, when wickedness increased on the earth. In those days also, the Nephilim were on the earth, an obscure term that some versions translate as “giants” (KJV, NKJV, GNB, AMP, LXX, etc.). The text may suggest that these “giants” were the offspring of... Read more

Entertaining Angels? Abraham’s Hospitality

Last updated on: January 25, 2023 at 10:51 am By B. J. Oropeza

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The exhortation in Hebrews 13:2 reads, “Do not neglect hospitality; by showing this, some have entertained angels without knowing it.” The verb for entertain is xenizô, which here means to welcome or have as one’s guest. My previous blog on hospitality showed that in Greco-Roman traditions, sometimes hospitable guests received strangers that happened to be gods, and they were rewarded accordingly. Jewish traditions have similar stories, and Hebrews 13:2, inter alia, probably alludes to Genesis 18-19. The Hospitality of Abraham... Read more

Hospitality in the Bible: Romans 12

Last updated on: January 29, 2023 at 10:53 pm By B. J. Oropeza

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Hospitality means philoxenia (φιλοξενία) in Romans 12:13. This combines two words, philos (“friend,” “dear,” “loving”) and xenos (“strange,” “foreign,” “alien,” “stranger”). The idea of a friend of strangers may help capture the sense of the word—the host treats the stranger like a friend. In an earlier blog I brought out a prime example of ancient hospitality through the story of the hunter from the orator, Dio Chrysostom. In this piece we focus on this word in relation to Greco-Roman protocols... Read more

Top 10 Commentaries on 1 Corinthians

Last updated on: January 29, 2023 at 10:33 pm By B. J. Oropeza

First Corinthians is the longest letter in the Bible after Romans, and we should be diligent to interpret it properly. Where can a good commentary be found that would help us do so? I list what I consider the top 10 commentaries on 1 Corinthians since the turn of the millennium. As with my previous write-ups on top commentaries in Romans and 2 Corinthians, I write from a scholar’s point of view rather than pastor’s. Even so, I would assume... Read more

Isaiah’s Servant in Paul: The Hermeneutics and Ethics of Paul’s Use of Isaiah 49-54

Last updated on: January 29, 2023 at 10:42 pm By B. J. Oropeza

What is the significance of the Servant in Isaiah in relation to the New Testament, particularly Paul’s letters? Dr. Daniel Cole interprets this famous portion of text from Isaiah, including Isaiah 53, not simply as fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah but in the church. Daniel M. I. Cole’s recent monograph, Isaiah’s Servant in Paul: The Hermeneutics and Ethics of Paul’s Use of Isaiah 49–54, WUNT 2.553 (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2021), discusses this viewpoint; his book is the topic of our current... Read more

A Tribute to E. P. Sanders

Last updated on: January 29, 2023 at 10:45 pm By B. J. Oropeza

E. P. Sanders, perhaps the most influential New Testament scholar in the last 50 years, passed away on November 21. Ed Parish Sanders was 85. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Fortress Press, 1977) became a trend-setting work that sparked the new perspective on Paul. Prior to this work, many Christian scholars, especially those influenced by Lutheran and other Protestant traditions, taught that first-century Judaism was typically a legalistic religion of righteousness by works. Sanders’s work... Read more

Junia: A Woman Apostle in the Bible (Romans 16:7)

Last updated on: January 29, 2023 at 11:00 pm By B. J. Oropeza

Amidst Paul’s greetings towards the end of Romans, apart from Phoebe and Priscilla, he greets Junia, another female colleague of great significance: “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kin and my fellow prisoners, who are distinguished among the apostles, who were also in Christ before me” (Romans 16:7). What can we know about Junia? Junia is a Fellow Jew Paul names both Andronicus and Junia as “kin” (συγγενεῖς/ syngeneis), which could mean that they are either fellow Jews or blood relatives... Read more

Romans: Texts, Readers, and the History of Interpretation. An Interview with Stephen Westerholm

Last updated on: January 29, 2023 at 10:58 pm By B. J. Oropeza

I recently had the privilege of conversing with one of the great Pauline scholars of our day, Stephen Westerholm. We discussed his new book entitled, Romans: Texts, Readers, and the History of Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022).This book is an introduction to Paul’s letter to the Romans that covers virtually all the past great interpreters of Romans, including Origen, John Chrysostom, Ambrosiaster, Augustine, Abelard, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, Arminius, John Locke, John Wesley, Adam Clarke, Matthew Poole, Henry Alford, Karl... Read more

What character trait is praised in the Parable of the Good Samaritan?