My Bibles (A Topical Introduction)
I thought I’d introduce myself a little further, by telling you about my bibles. I expect my very first bible is somewhere in this house, but I couldn’t find it when I went looking. It was an...
View ArticlePsalm 1 and Poetic Forms
Psalm 1 was one of the scriptural texts that I was assigned in my first exegesis class. While engaging with this text, I discovered to my surprise and delight that much of what I had learned about the...
View ArticleReading and Writing about Paul
This summer I’m doing an independent study course with Dr. Michael Gorman on Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Perspectives on Paul, starting with an overview of the undisputed Pauline letters and...
View ArticleRhode Island, Roger Williams, and Religious Freedom
As an expat Rhode Islander, I was delighted to see this article at Religion In American History: Big Ideas in a Small State: Roger Williams and the 375th Anniversary of the Founding of Providence,...
View ArticleOnline Concordances?
A quick question for my distinguished co-bloggers and other BLT readers: What concordances do you use and recommend, and why? In particular, I’m looking for a unified concordance of the Greek New...
View ArticleA bit of wordplay in Chrysostom?
I’m reading some of the homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Pauline epistles as part of my summer project on Paul, and came across this line near the close of his homily on Romans 6:19-7:13 which,...
View ArticleResearching Romans: Trent, Calvin, and Contemporary Commentaries
Well, the intensive phase of my summer independent study is done, and — after taking a week off because my brain went on strike — I have managed to get myself organized for the research paper for final...
View ArticleSix Eight Months Later*
(*I meant to write this after six months, but life’s been busy!) Well, it’s been six eight months now since we bade farewell to the ICEL translation of the Roman Missal and started using the new, so I...
View ArticleTravel in the Roman Empire
Science News reports this week on the work of Elijah Meeks, a digital humanities specialist at Stanford, in creating A new interactive map of the Roman Empire that includes roads, rivers and hundreds...
View Article[ex|homo]ousia ?
Suzanne’s recent post on exousia = potestas = power reminded me of a question I’ve had since encountering this Greek word for the first time in Paul’s letters this summer. Etymologically, this word...
View ArticleThose -oo Verbs
In his commentary on The Thought of St. Paul, Roman Catholic scholar William Most makes an etymological argument against the traditional Protestant understanding that the verb dikaioo has a strictly...
View ArticleCalling All Preachers
If you are a current or former pastor, preacher, or minister in any Christian tradition, would you please consider responding to this ten-question survey? Responses received by Monday, 27 August will...
View ArticleChronological or Canonical?
Interesting post over at Reading Acts on Reading the New Testament: Chronological or Canonical?, engaging with an article by Marcus Borg on the subject. Certainly I grew up believing that the canonical...
View ArticleTopics in Early Church History?
My fall semester class on Early Church History started last night. My prof is very enthusiastic: this is her favorite period of history and her favorite class to teach. So that should be fun! We have...
View ArticlePerpetua and Felicity
Stained glass window of Felicity (kneeling) and Perpetua (standing). Photo credit Wikimedia CommonsI’ve always been curious about Perpetua and Felicity. I knew they were martyrs, I knew they were...
View ArticleDescribing the Bible
This week in my church history class, we studied methods of biblical interpretation in the early church, and were given the exercise of trying out an allegorical, typological, or moral interpretation...
View ArticleReview: Testament Of Abraham
Testament Of Abraham by Dale C. Allison Jr. My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is a superb piece of scholarship on a non-canonical Jewish-origin text that really deserves to be better known. The story of...
View ArticleInclusive Language Standards: Coming to a Seminary Near You?
I recently came across the very comprehensive APA Guidelines for Non-Sexist Use of Language. The APA in this case is the American Philosophical Association, though this document was modeled on those of...
View ArticleGeeky!
My esteemed co-blogger Suzanne, in her engaging post on Chapter and Verse, mentioned in passing that In my experience, when somebody refers to someone – ostensibly to themselves – as a “geek”, they...
View ArticleThe Bride of Christ: a feminist reading
The image of the church, or the soul, as the Bride of Christ is a longstanding one in Christian theology, and can be seen as complementary to the image of the church as the Body of Christ. The...
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