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Absalom the Usurper
For bedtime reading, our family has been reading through the David cycle in the Hebrew Scriptures. Of course, this part of the Scriptures is my bread-and-butter. One day, I will write a book on David...
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Ittai the Gittite: A “Little” Help from Your Friends
As David is fleeing east from Jerusalem because of his son Absalom’s betrayal, he meets an old friend Ittai the Gittite. Ittai is planning to come with David, and the following conversation occurs:...
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Joab the Psycho
I have mentioned before that our Sunday School ideals of David’s kingdom are painfully mistaken. David formed an uneasy alliance between Judah and Ephraim, which Ephraim often tried to violate. The...
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Theories as Facts
Among students of the Scriptures, it is often hard to discern the theories from the facts. Someone in one generation develops an idea, and the next generation – who learned the idea in their college...
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Herod Antipater
There are a lot of Herodians in the Gospels and Acts. It gets pretty confusing if you’re not keeping a score card. Herod the Great and His Kids They all descend from Herod the Great, who the gospel of...
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All Those -Ites in the Bible
Amorites, Ammonites, Jebusites, Edomites, blah-blah-ites. What’s with all these -ites in the Bible? Sometimes the most confusing thing about reading the Bible is all of the names. Because the early...
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Three Languages Isolate and the Hebrew Bible
Around 5,000 years ago, there were three languages spoken in the Middle East that have no relationship whatsoever to any other known language – present or ancient. These three languages – Sumerian,...
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A Deeply Troubling Moment
The Scriptures contain some very, very strange passages. There are things in the Bible that make even the most committed readers shake their heads in confusion. One of the all-time strangest passages...
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The Book of Ruth
Those who know me also know about my on-again-off-again obsession with writing a book about David and the rise of Israel during the twilight of the Late Bronze Age and the birth of the Early Iron Age....
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Tom Wright on Framing the Debate on Homosexuality
Once again, Tom Wright brings wisdom and reason to a hot topic. Toward the end, he addresses the Enlightenment arrogance of those who say, “We know more about homosexuality” or “We have evolved from...
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Uriah the Hittite
2 Samuel 11 contains a story that pretty much any Sunday School kid learned. King David commits adultery with a young woman named Bathsheba and they conceive a child. He then has her husband killed to...
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Reading the Exodus and Wanderings
While our congregation is reading through Exous, Leviticus and Numbers, I thought I would add some daily notes of things that caught my imagination. Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of...
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Nineveh, that Great City
Our family is reading the book of Jonah, and we are considering God’s grace to the people of Nineveh, and today we read Jonah’s words after the people of Nineveh repented. O LORD, is not this what I...
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The Church of the Resurrection, part 1
Modern Jerusalem is quite a sight. It is a city of three-quarters of a million people, covering 48 square miles of Judaean hills. Every year, nearly 10 million tourists and pilgrims come to the city,...
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The Church of the Resurrection, part 2
In my last post, I talked about the construction of the original basilica and rotunda built on the site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection. Those buildings were built in 337 CE and stood unmolested...
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The Church of the Resurrection, part 3
The previous post made a passing reference to the building of the Dome of the Rock which still sits on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The construction of this shrine and the remaking of the Temple...
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The Church of the Resurrection, part 4
This is part 4 of a series of posts on the history of the Church of the Resurrection. In a previous part, we saw how the Church was badly damaged during the brief period when the Sassanids controlled...
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The Church of the Resurrection – Links
We have filled the last three weeks looking at the Church of the Resurrection (also known as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher). Hopefully, the story of this revered but often neglected site gives us a...
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History and Language – Tools for Biblical Exegesis
Why does the teacher of the Scriptures need to know history? Why should we invest the time to not just be acquainted with the languages and cultures of the biblical authors? In the post-Protestant...
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Herod the Great, Introduction
Herod the Great looms over the story of Jesus’ birth in the Gospel of Matthew. He is a character judged more by popular impressions than by Scriptural revelation. For generations, that brief glimpse...
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