2014-05-05T00:00:00+06:00

Last updated on: May 5, 2014 at 12:00 am   By

Amos warns Israel about her injustices. If they do not seek Yahweh, He will consume them, those who “turn justice to wormwood and cast righteousness to the earth” (5:1-7).  Amos supports this with a description of God’s creative power (vv. 8-9). The declaration of God’s creative power is complexly structured. He begins by stating that Yahweh made the constellations, specifically the Heap (Pleiades) and the Giant (Orion). Then: A. Changes B. To morning C. Deep darkness B’. And Day C’. To... Read more

2014-05-03T00:00:00+06:00

Last updated on: May 3, 2014 at 12:00 am   By

A 2011 article in the Bulletin for Biblical Research attempts to identify the modern names for the gemstones that are found in the Septuagint. James Harrell, a geologist at the University of Toledo, explains some of the complications. It won’t do, he argues, to try to identify the Hebrew names with the LXX names, first because there appear to have been different versions of the LXX (Josephus’s list of the gems on Aaron’s breastplate is not from the Hebrew text, but... Read more

2014-05-03T00:00:00+06:00

Last updated on: May 3, 2014 at 12:00 am   By

In the wilderness, Israel eats they know not what, which they call “manna,” “What is it?” The Old Testament describes it as being like something flakey (chaspas) like frost (kafor; Exodus 16:14). Alternatively it is like bedellium (bedolach; Numbers 11:7), which doesn’t seem like much held unless we know what that is. Following through the LXX usage, we might make some progress. It translates bedolach as krustallos, a word elsewhere associated with ice and frost (Job 6:16; Psalm 148:8), and... Read more

2014-05-03T00:00:00+06:00

Last updated on: May 3, 2014 at 12:00 am   By

Writing at Slate, William Saletan says that “There will always be Christians, Muslims, and Jews who condemn homosexuality. There will be bigots, bashers, and demagogues. And in some places, particularly in Africa and Asia, there will be persecution and oppressive laws. But in this country, religious resistance is crumbling. It’s being overwhelmed by love, conscience, and a God who keeps creating gay kids, even in the most devout families. Over time, He will prevail.” Not all his evidence is compelling. He... Read more

2014-05-03T00:00:00+06:00

Last updated on: May 3, 2014 at 12:00 am   By

Carl Trueman posted Rusty Reno’s barroom analysis of the Biola panel on the future of Protestantism. He writes in part: “Both of us, in a sense, see an epochal change taking place in American Christianity. As far as conservative Protestantism is concerned, I connect this to the collapse of traditional Protestantism as a cultural force, and, more specifically, to the judicial and social ways in which gay marriage has come to function in society. Peter (if I read him correctly) sees the... Read more

2014-05-02T00:00:00+06:00

Last updated on: May 2, 2014 at 12:00 am   By

John sees Jesus the Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, the latter being “the seven Spirits of God” (Revelation 5:6). What are the seven Spirits? There are many dimensions to the answer: Seven is the number of creation, seven the rhythm or melody of the Creator Spirit; there are seven Spiritual blessings in Isaiah’s description of the Servant. But there’s a closer answer within Revelation 5. Verse 6 uses the number “seven” three times, and a few verses later,... Read more

2014-05-02T00:00:00+06:00

Last updated on: May 2, 2014 at 12:00 am   By

One of the great evils of Protestant tribalism is the impact it has on our prayers. There’s no way to tell, but I suspect that few Protestant churches, especially Evangelical churches, pray regularly for reform in the Catholic and Orthodox churches.  It’s easy to neglect such prayers, so long as Catholics and Orthodox are outsiders. If they aren’t (and even if they are outsiders), then we want the best for them, and we Protestants think that it would be best... Read more

2014-05-02T00:00:00+06:00

Last updated on: May 2, 2014 at 12:00 am   By

There’s a certain common-sense logic to the notion that we have to begin our efforts toward unity and catholicity within our own group. First get all Lutherans could get together, and all Anglicans, and all Presbyterians, and then maybe we’d be ready to talk about getting those bundled churches together with each other. I’m not wholly against this. We should get along with those closest to us. We should love neighbors who, as Chesterton pointed out, as by definition nearby.... Read more

2014-05-02T00:00:00+06:00

Last updated on: May 2, 2014 at 12:00 am   By

In her study of Tudor-Stuart notions of metaphor (Translating Investments), Judith Anderson explores the significance of nominal sentences – sentences without verbs, much used in ancient languages but rare in English. Does a nominal sentence imply a copulative verb of being? Or is it expressing some other sort of relation between subject and predicate? Anderson describes various answers to these questions, and offers this summary of Ernst Cassirer: “Intent on the Kantian rationality of the copula, he agrees with [Emile]... Read more

2014-05-02T00:00:00+06:00

Last updated on: May 2, 2014 at 12:00 am   By

Harold Bloom argued in his American Religion that Mormonism was the quintessential American religion. Bloom had his own Gnostic reasons for saying that, but his basic point finds confirmation in Eran Shalev’s American Zion. Shalev presents Mormonism as a convergence of at least two American trends. On the one hand, he recounts the debate about the Israelite origin of Native Americans that caught on during the 18th century and was revived after the War of 1812. James Adair’s History of the American... Read more

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