You may have noticed that “kingdom” language is frequent in the Gospels and Jesus’ teaching, but seems to almost disappear in the rest of the NT. After examining every instance of βασιλεία in the NT, this is what I found….
In Inductive Bible Study, the authors give five reasons why inductive Bible study is important. I agree with the authors that Evangelical churches do not typically do a good job of “equipping God’s people to study his Word”….
We had an unofficial contest on our Facebook page and weekly Greek email. We asked everyone to summarize the Bible in one sentence, and we got some great responses. Here they all are, along with our pick for the best answer. Look for further contests, as we recently acquired some great Greek resources at a used book sale to give away to you all….
The Cincinnati campus of the Hebrew Union College was tagged by a swastika yesterday. HUC is the first permanent Jewish institution of higher learning and was established in 1875. They now have multiple campuses in New York, Los Angeles, and Jerusalem. As their president notes, “For more than 140 years HUC-JIR has been committed to being the liberal, open and welcoming center of Jewish life and education….
Seminary is an interesting and formative time. Church history class is perhaps one of the most important times, since it demonstrates to students (to many for the first time) the boundaries for orthodox theology that have been worked out in ages past. What a better setting in which to learn you’re a heretic….
In our Book of the Week, David L. Allen’s The Extent of the Atonement, David L. Allen surveys every period of church history to demonstrate the relative popularity of limited and unlimited atonement among various groups. The first part of his book argues that limited atonement did not arise as a formulated doctrine until Theodore Beza….
Someone recently told me a new pastor had started at their church and that he was so boring and intellectual that he should be teaching in a seminary. He was using a new style of preaching…”expositional,” it was called. This congregant had never heard of “expositional” preaching until this pastor had come, and the impression he gave was not positive!….
Scholars often claim that pseudepigraphy in the ancient world was not deception, but was a commonly accepted practice. To test that claim, one must examine attitudes toward pseudepigraphy in the Greco-Roman world, how known pseudepigraphs were handled and treated, why they were written, and how the early church treated them….
It’s never good news to find out a resource you have used frequently is problematic, whether because of flawed methodology or something more serious, such as plagiarism. We found out this week that one of the best modern commentators, Peter T. O’Brien, has produced three of our favorite Evangelical commentaries with plagiarism interspersed throughout….
Esther is notorious for not mentioning “God.” He is working behind the scenes in his sovereignty to orchestrate events to work for the preservation of his people and for justice against their enemies. But, did you know that the word “God” actually occurs 26 times in Esther? Well, at least in the additions Old Greek….