Description: Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (PPJ – Part 4) – KR 124 The last body of Jewish literature that E.P. Sanders investigates in Paul and Palestinian Judaism is the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Scot explores Sanders’s synthesis of this literature to shed light on questions like how do works come from faith and how do rewards and punishments work within covenant nomism? Sign up for Reading Romans Backward here Read more

From Beth Allison Barr, featuring Beth Moore, Which starts here… In Let Me Be A Woman, Elliot draws a clear line in the sand. Women are different from men, and women should stop trying to claim equality with men. Women’s submission is the divine order of the universe and it is time for women to embrace it.  As she writes: “It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men… Read more

One of the most interesting insights is the nothing new under the sun phenomenon, at least when it comes to human nature. We’ve been working through Craig Allert’s new book Early Christian Readings of Genesis One. Several years ago I read and posted on Peter Bouteneff’s book Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives. In this book Bouteneff looks at several of the early church fathers including the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil and the two Gregories, Gregory of Nazianus… Read more

The newest resource for lectionary preachers, which means turning soon to the weeks of Advent, is a new multi-volume series called Connections, and now volume 2, covering Lent Through Pentecost, is coming available: Connections C: 2). The first volume can be purchased here: Connections C: 1, Buy one volume each season in the church calendar and in three years you will have a complete commentary on the whole lectionary. You will also have a multitude of suggestions on how to… Read more

Source: For scholars, the phrase “publish or perish” has become an ironclad rule of academic career development. Without a sufficient number of publications in the right kinds of journals, tenure and promotion are just a pipe dream. But another, much less studied aspect of faculty work can also shape the arc of a career in the professoriate. It is not teaching or service. It is the invited talk. The talks can take many forms. There are the ever-popular seminar series,… Read more

John Walton and his son J. Harvey Walton, The Lost World of the Torah, and the 5th part of their book will prove to be the most controversial. Why? W&W anchor the Torah in the Ancient Near East (ANE), in the covenant God made (exclusively) with Israel (not the church, and the covenant and its legislation stipulations are about God’s presence with Israel. We are not in that covenant so what is said to that covenant people is not “to”… Read more

In Chapter 5 of Understanding Scientific Theories of Origins John Walton argued at length that in the opening chapter of Genesis God is ordering the cosmos and creating sacred space. It does not describe creation ex nihilo – out of nothing. In fact, Walton argues that it does not really describe material creation at all. Whether this is accurate or not, it is clear that both creation from nothing and an interpretation of Genesis 1 in the context of creation… Read more

By Geoff Holsclaw, theology professor at Northern Seminary & a local church pastor. Pick up his FREE “Refocusing Faith” E-course. Growing up, workaholism was a vice to avoid (at least, in theory). But now, workism has become its own religion of sorts—promising “identity, transcendence, and community.” This is the thesis of Derek Thompson of The Atlantic. Amid the decline of traditional faith in America (a claim I find dubious), Thompson suggests workism is an upstart religion clamoring for congregants. And America is fertile ground for its growth (a… Read more