Exegesis

Rethinking Rethinking Jepthah’s Foolish Vow

Evangelical OT scholar Miles Van Pelt, co-author of a biblical Hebrew textbook and academic dean at RTS Jackson, knows a thing or ten about the Old Testament. And I only know a thing. But I still respectfully disagree with the small article he posted yesterday on...

The Literal Meaning of Literal

In the American South, it can still feel natural to have religious discussions with strangers. My last was with a friendly and professional C-Dry Basement services salesman. Standing in my mildly leaky, retirement-age home (b. 1948), he told me confidently, "You can't...

Rob Lister’s Hermeneutical Method

In the opening pages of his God Is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion, Rob Lister pretty well sums up what I try to do every time I preach: The relevant biblical data needs to be interpreted with a conscious commitment to formulating...

Review: Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief

Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief by John M. Frame My rating: 4 of 5 stars When a systematic theology begins with a series of endorsements that are longer than certain other systematics, you know you’ve got either a goldmine or a naked emperor....

Sloganeering and Homosexual Marriage

Sloganeering is not generally a persuasive form of argument: "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" Has any American across the cultural divide from conservative Christianity ever changed his mind after reading that on a billboard or poster? Somehow I doubt...

Ode to Moses

Preaching weekly through Genesis over the last year or so has given me a much deeper appreciation for the literary artistry of Moses. We're in chapter 46, and I see better than ever that the themes of seed, land, and blessing are truly ubiquitous after chapter 12....

Loglan, Lojban, and Bible Interpretation

I thoroughly enjoyed Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages. One of the stories that stuck with me was Okrent's description of how the megalomaniacal inventor of the language "Loglan" thought he could come up with a worldview-neutral language. "Loglan" is...

Moisés Silva on the Hermeneutical Spiral

Moisés Silva's essay in Revelation and Reason: New Essays in Reformed Apologetics offers a somewhat startling thesis: "My theological system should tell me how to exegete." (86) Many exegetes profess to come to the text sans system, but Silva argues that because this...

Another Example of Language Change in the Last 400 Years: Punctuation

Three minutes ago I discovered another passage I had been misreading for years because I always thought of it in 400-year-old KJV language: As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: So shall he...

An Approximately 25-Year-Old Misunderstanding with 400-Year-Old Roots

Today I’m writing about the funny, interesting, and powerful story of Elijah for eighth graders. And just now—just now, after 25 years of being a Bible reader—I realized what the King James translators meant when they have Elijah say, “How long halt ye between two...

Dale Ralph Davis on Micro-Salvation

Every time God lifts you out of the miry bog and sets your feet upon a rock is a sample of the coming of the kingdom of God, a down payment of the full deliverance, the macro-salvation that will be yours at last. 1 Samuel: Looking on the Heart, 25.

Dempster on Samson

A perceptive observation from a book full of such insights into the Old Testament: Stephen Dempster: The structure of Judges shows that Israel gradually descends into a moral and political quagmire, and this is mirrored in the sequence of judges themselves, most of...