Translation 21 But now, apart from the Torah, God’s righteousness has been manifested, being witnessed by the Torah and the Prophets. 22 God’s righteousness is unveiled through faith in Iēsous the Anointed One for all those who believe; for there is no partiality; 23 because all have offended and are shorn of God’s glory, 24 being undeservedly righteoused by his unmerited favor through the manumission which is in the Anointed Iēsous; 25 whom God publicly displayed as the seat of... Read more
D. Clint Burnett Studying the New Testament Through Inscriptions Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2020. Available at Hendrickson and Koorong. During my PhD studies I read Corpus inscriptionum judaicarum compiled by Jean-Baptist Frey (abbrev. CIJ). It was a terrific resource that showcased nearly every extant ancient inscription about Jews and Judaism from antiquity and it was very useful for my study on the spread and propagation of Judaism in the Roman empire. Frey’s collection is replaced now by David Noy and Hanswulf Bloedhorn’s newer multi-volume... Read more
Did the apostle Paul think of Christ as an angel who became human and then returned to heaven? A minority of scholars have thought this the case.[1] When Paul refers to Christ as the “heavenly man” (epaouranios) in 1 Cor 15.48-49 it could imply that Christ is the heavenly archetype of Adam[2] or else a heavenly being akin to an angel. The sending of the Son (Rom 8.3; Gal 4.4) is perhaps the sending of an angelic son like the... Read more
Christians and Governing Rulers (Rom 13:1-7) Translation 1 Let every person be subject to the imperial authorities; for there is no authority except from God, as those authorities have been instituted by God. 2 So that, the one rebelling against authority rebels against what God has appointed, and rebels will receive due recompense. 3 For rulers elicit no fear among those who perform good deeds, but only for those who do wicked deeds. Do you wish to be free of... Read more
People often ask me how do I find a thesis topic for a PhD? In my case, I read N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God, pp. 308-10 and I was intrigued by how Jesus’s mission to Israel related to the emergence of the Gentile mission in the early church. How do you get from, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 10:5-6)... Read more
T. J. Betts Nehemiah: A Pastoral & Exegetical Commentary. Lexham, 2020 Reviewed by Andrew Judd (Associate Lecturer in Old Testament, Ridley College, Melbourne) Nehemiah has suffered some neglect in Christian preaching so it is encouraging to see this new volume focused on a Christian reading of the book’s pastoral implications. The commentary opens with a concise nine pages of introduction, focused on the historical background of the text and its relationship to the book of Deuteronomy. This will serve lay... Read more
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to... Read more
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother” (Col 1:1). How should we read “Christ Jesus”? While the Greek word Christos may function as a proper name, I do not think it has lost all of its titular or honorific significance (see Matthew Novenson on the “honorific” side). In certain places Christos is clearly intended as a Greek translation for the Hebrew masiah and the Aramaic mesiha from which we get “Messiah.” Indeed,... Read more
A few months ago conservative Christian influencer James White was warning of the dangers of empathy, even calling it sinful. Now, if one means empathy in the sense of emotional coercion, then obviously that’s not good. However, White was defining empathy as something someone does to make you feel guilty for their trauma (like racism or sexual abuse). It is allegedly self-indulgent rather than Christ-honoring. Empathy is wrong because it is an emotional response rather than a Stoic expression of... Read more
I am deeply appreciative of the opportunity to review and respond to Dr. Bowen’s book on African-American Interpretation of the apostle Paul. I consider the book to be not only highly informative account of Pauline reception history and American religious history, but also truly gripping, documenting as it does the cruel subjugation of African-American people, and the succour and spiritual springs that African-Americans have found in the letters of the apostle Paul. It was also my favourite book of 2020,... Read more
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