Category Archives: Old Testament

“The Genesis Flood”

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Pretty early on in my Christian life, I acquired two books about the relationship between science and the Bible.  One was Bernard Ramm’s A Christian View of Science and Scripture (1954) and the second was The Genesis Flood, by  John Whitcomb and Henry Morris (1961).  The latter was intended, in part at least, to be a response to the first.  Ramm had argued for an old earth creation and localised flood, whereas Whitcomb and Morris attempted to make a case for a young earth creation and a worldwide flood.…

Genesis 1 & 2 – Two creation accounts

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Why do the first two chapters of Genesis give two very different accounts of creation?

A sceptical approach is to say that they are contradictory, and therefore neither can be relied on as divinely inspired.

Among believers, an attempt is quite often made to fit the two together by making the account in chapter 2 part of the events of Day 6 as recorded in chapter 1.

Another approach is to regard the narrative in chapter 2 as introductory to the longer narrative about the Fall:

‘Many writers have sought to find a second creation story in Gn.

…

Genesis 1 – The six days of creation

Walking With Giants Posted on by

As summarised here, Genesis 1 describes seven days of creation:

  • in the beginning – God started creation
  • the first day – light was created
  • the second day – the sky was created
  • the third day – dry land, seas, plants and trees were created
  • the fourth day – the Sun, Moon and stars were created
  • the fifth day – creatures that live in the sea and creatures that fly were created
  • the sixth day – animals that live on the land and finally humans, made in the image of God were created
  • by day seven – God finished his work of creation and rested, making the seventh day a special holy day.
…

The law of the Lord in the Psalms

Walking With Giants Posted on by

A.T. Pierson notes that three psalms – Psa 1, Psa 19 and Psa 119 – pay special tribute to the law of the Lord.

The second and third pick up the subject where the previous left it, and no two cover the same ground.

Psa 1 depicts the blessedness of him whose delight is found in meditating upon Holy Scripture.  Here, the lover and doer of God’s word and the hater and scorner are contrasted in character, conduct and destiny.…

Urban legends of the Old Testament

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Urban Legends of the Old Testament: 40 Common Misconceptions.  By David A Croteau and Gary E. Yates.  Published by B&H Publishing Group (2019).

This book discussed 40 misinterpretations of Old Testament passages.

Here’s a list of contents.  Items marked with a *star are included in my own set of ‘legends’.

*1. In the “Gap” between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, Satan Fell.  This would require the reading, ‘And the earth became formless and empty’.  What would then follow would be an account of re-creation. …

Ash: How to pray the psalms in Christ

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Christopher Ash, in Teaching Psalms, Vol 1, has developed a case for interpreting and preaching the Psalms in a rigorously Christ-centred way.

He espouses the view that all the psalms are ‘about, for, or to the Anointed King (Messiah).’

My initial reaction to this proposal was twofold:

(a) Yes, I want to exalt Christ in every possible way, and therefore to celebrate an approach that is thoroughly Christ-centred.

(b) But I suspected that Ash’s approach is actually quite restricted, in inhibiting a Trinitarian reading of the Psalms and in (potentially) leading to a neglect of their original meaning. …

Preaching Old Testament characters

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Introduction

There are several reasons for exercising caution when planning to preach from an OT character:

  • a tendency to read biblical characters as heroes
  • a tendency to oversimplify biblical characters
  • a tendency to treat biblical characters as moral examples (‘Dare to be a Daniel’)
  • a tendency (in modern literature) to focus on the inner workings of people’s minds, which leads either to a frustration with biblical narratives or to a temptation to indulge in speculation of our own

A further challenge arises from our difficulty in separating out the narrator’s point of view and that of the character his/her self. …

Chris Wright: the conquest of Canaan

Walking With Giants Posted on by

This event is rightly unsettling.  Christopher Wright offers some points to help us evaluate it ethically:

  1. It was a limited event. The conquest narratives describe one particular period of Israel’s long history. Many of the other wars that occur in the OT narrative had no divine sanction, and some were clearly condemned as the actions of proud, greedy kings or military rivals.
  2. We must allow for the exaggerated language of warfare. Israel, like other ancient Near East nations whose documents we possess, had a rhetoric of war that often exceeded reality.
…

Christ-centred preaching – some pitfalls

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Edmund Clowney, Sidney Greidanus, Graeme Goldsworthy, Bryan Chappell, Christopher Wright, David Murray, Christopher Ash and others have done the church a great service by their advocacy, in various ways, of a Christ-centred approach to preaching from the Old Testament.

What’s not to like?

Amid all the enthusiasm, Daniel Block sounds a note or two of caution.

Block agrees that Christ-centred preaching

  1. ‘has a long history, beginning with the apostles, the church fathers, the reformers (especially Luther), and extending to more a recent revival [of] Christ-centered preaching in some circles.
…

More urban legends of the Old Testament

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Having compiled a couple of sets relating to texts in the New Testament, I thought I’d take a look at some commonly-misunderstood texts from the Old Testament.  These are discussed more fully in the Bible Study Notes.

Here’s a start:-

Genesis 1 – Gap theory.  Is there a ‘gap’ between verses 1 and 2?  According to some, there first two verses teach that God created the heavens and the earth ‘in the beginning’ and that the earth became (some unspecified interval later) formless and void. …