2016
Prophecy is not an end unto itself, “For the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy” (Rev.19.10).
It can mean the witness that the Christian bears to Jesus. It can equally mean the witness that Jesus Christ bears to …
This passage has been a source of discussion in doctrinal writing about sin. We want to examine features of the text that need to be taken into account when writing about sin.
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into …
Graham’s modesty will not thank me for saying that he is one of the finest writers the Christadelphian community can boast. But to be truthful, one would need to go beyond the humble accolade of being a big fish in …
The ambition of this book is to describe how the Bible can be self-authenticating. This is intended to answer the worry of how the Bible can be known to be true, be known to be the inerrant word of God, …
The Christadelphian community is blessed with individuals who have the aptitude, the willingness and the patience to engage with academic literature, both as readers and as writers. This latter activity, participating in the wider theological dialogue, gives Christadelphians the opportunity …
In January 2016, I wrote Part One of this series on Ezekiel 38 in the EJournal. This set out to expose the prophecy’s historical background, logic of potential interpretation, and, hence, its present-day application. My final paragraph, in January, explained …
For several reasons Ezekiel 38 is a difficult prophecy to understand. It presents difficulties in identifying the protagonists, the ancient geographical regions, the chronology and the initial fulfilment (is there a contemporary fulfilment or is it all placed in …
What is Paul’s most basic statement about Christ? The difficulty in choosing such a foundation lies in how to balance the difficult pronouncements of passages such as Phil 2:5-11 and Col 1:15-20 with the more straightforward statements to give …
Elements of Genesis 1 are often interpreted against the background of other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) cosmological/creation texts. This is a very different choice to one that confines itself to inter-textual interpretation and …
Another year (10th) is over for the EJournal. If Christ remains away for another thousand years, the solutions put into print to long-standing exegetical problems in the pages of this EJournal will be lost and it will have been so …
St. Catherine’s Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site that’s located on rugged terrain at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt, houses the oldest continually operating library in the world, containing ancient and medieval manuscripts second only to those held …
It is argued by some commentators that Russia is, and always has been, such a large, diverse and unwieldy country that it is ‘awkward’ to …
By appropriating and extending imagery from the same genres as 1 Thessalonians, the eschatology of 2 Thessalonians both corrects and consoles its audience, in order to engage with the developing Thessalonian situation. By comparing 2 Thess. 1.5-2.12 to 1 Thess. 4.13-5.11 …
The genre of Proverbs 31 is an encomium. An encomium is high praise for a person or type of person. In the Bible, the encomium is found in psalms that praise the righteous man, and here where the woman …
The approach to Paul that considers he had a problem with his fellow Jews and Judaism is misleading. Paul is working with/under the Spirit to incorporate the Gentiles into Israel in keeping with the ‘last days’ prophecies of his scriptures. …
The hypothesis proposed in this article is that the Epistle of James is the earliest of all the New Testament writings, written before the Gospels and that it was produced in response to the problems facing the church in …
Erik Waaler notes “It has been argued that 1 Cor 8:1-6 is the earliest NT text testifying to the pre-existence of Christ and His participation in the act of creation.”[1] C. Fletcher-Louis says that 1 Cor …
If we ask what a Humanities ‘student’ is, an obvious answer is that s/he is someone who is devoting many hours to study each day in a given subject, writing essays, talking with their peers and working towards a goal …
The identity of Immanuel is disputed and different suggestions have been proposed. This article will argue the case that Immanuel is Hezekiah. The problem with identifying Hezekiah as Immanuel are two-fold; (1) It is disallowed by the chronology of …
The Christian canon knows and recognises four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These were not, by any means, the only documents known as gospels, but most of these other claimants have only tenuous basis for being called so. In …
The cry from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me’ is very well known. The Greek verb () is given the meanings ‘leave behind, abandon, desert, forsake’ in lexicons. The corresponding Hebrew verb in Psalm 22 …
Christ is the one through whom God reconciles all things; he is the agent or mediator; hence, reconciliation is also attributed to Christ:
And that he might reconcile both in one body to God through the cross, having slain the …
The question for this discussion is what roles did a woman perform under the Law and in the NT ecclesia. A contested area in this age of equality. T. Gaston has presented an egalitarian reading of the evidence. We …
Our assumptions about biblical roles are often set within a masculine frame. We imagine priests as men, prophets as men, apostles as men. Yet just because we imagine something to be so, does not mean that it …
There is a good deal of fitting together of the understanding of events, and the ideas inherent within them, to begin to understand what went on during this time period and answer our question. Here are some important jig-saw pieces, …
Form criticism attempts to reconstruct the life settings that produce biblical texts. Most scholars date Matthew’s gospel between 80-90 CE, written to a Jewish Christian audience, initially in Palestine (Galilee or Antioch) where the first Jewish Christian became established. Matthew’s …
N. T. Wright opens his exegesis of Col 1:15-20 by saying the passage “exhibits a characteristically Pauline form of what we may call christological monotheism”.[1] His exegesis takes the line that the passage expresses a Wisdom Christology. The …
This article will suggest new perspectives for Psalm 22 and also attempt historical contextualization as well as resolving some difficult textual problems.
Psalm 22 is incredibly important in the New Testament. R. D. Patterson summarises:
“Pride of …