Category Archives: Bible

Imagining the Kingdom

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‘Imagining the Kingdom: Mission and Theology in Early Christianity’: This is the title of Tom Wright’s inaugural lecture at St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews 26th October 2011.

Here is the full text of that lecture.

It is something of a tour de force, and I’m going to attempt to sketch out the main steps of the first part of Wright’s argument.

The four Gospels are remarkable documents, and we should not allow their familiarity, or the existence of purported rivals (such as the ‘Gospel of Thomas’ or the hypothetical ‘Q’) to blind us to ‘their remarkable blend of page-turning narrative, vivid portraiture (especially of their central figure), historical verisimilitude and sophisticated theology.’…

Large numbers in the Old Testament

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To the reader who is inclined to take Old Testament history seriously, the presence of large numbers – particularly in military accounts – presents a significant problem.

What are we to make of

  • the standing army of Israel of over half a million (Num 1:46; 2:32; 26:51)?
  • the 27,000 Aramean soldiers who were killed by a collapsing wall (1 Kings 20:29f)?
  • the different accounts given of David’s census in 2 Sam 24 and 1 Chr 21?
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The Gospel miracles

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For many people, the miracle-stories of the Gospels present the chief difficulty in the way of accepting those writings as historically reliable.

Since these miracle-stories are related by authors who can be shown on other grounds to be trustworthy, then they are worthy at least of serious attention by historians.

The Gospels do not ask us to belief in ridiculous miracles; they are precisely the kinds of work that might be expected from such a person as Jesus is represented to be.…

The Minor Prophets as a football team

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If you want to memorise the names of the Minor Prophets in the right order, think of them as a football team:-

Hosea (HOS) is Head of Side

Joel is in goal

Amos and Obadiah (Alpha and Omega) are the two full-backs

Jonah, Micah and Nahum (the three five-letter prophets) are the half-backs

And finally, playing in an HZHZM formation are the five forwards – Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

I picked this up form the spoken ministry of Jonathan Fletcher. …

The Bible is not a book

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In his review of Melvyn Bragg’s The Book of Books: the radical impact of the King James Bible, 1611-2011, Philip Hensher writes:-

‘Considered as a book, the Bible is far too long. Its characterisation is not all it should be: its hero, God, seems totally inconsistent, varying from a prankster with a bizarre sense of humour (Job) to a sensible dispenser of advice. You can’t help feeling that it is really rather patchy in quality: some of it is wonderfully entertaining, such as the Acts of the Apostles and the two Books of Kings, but some of it doesn’t seem to be interested in entertaining the reader one bit.

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Oral tradition and the Gospels

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Craig Blomberg has written extensively on the historical reliability of the Gospels.  In the relevant article in the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, he identifies a number of factors that support the probability that the Gospels faithfully preserve the oral traditions on which they are based.

1. Jesus was perceived by his followers as one who proclaimed God’s Word in a way which demanded careful retelling.

2. Over ninety percent of his teachings has poetic elements which would have made them easy to memorize.

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Inerrancy as an evangelical ‘boundary marker’

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According to one commentator, when Matthew came to write his narrative of Jesus’ birth, he based it on Luke’s account.  Matthew, however, was writing for a different readership, and so changed Luke’s true story about the humble shepherds coming in from the fields to visit the baby Jesus into a fictitious one about some high-ranking Magi coming from the East to pay their respects, offering costly gifts.  Matthew re-told the story because he wanted to emphasise Jesus’ mission to the Gentiles. …

Beware the disjunctive fallacy!

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Ephesians 5:23 says: ‘The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour.‘

Lawrence O. Richards argues that headship in the NT has nothing to do with authority: ‘Authority, with its right to control and demand obedience, is not suggested.  The fact that the living head of the church, Jesus, is a person with supreme authority is presented to comfort and assure it of His ability to meet its needs…As head He is the source and origin of our life. …

Inerrancy and infallibility

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Inerrancy and infallibility, writes Timothy Ward, are not to be thought of as the most important things that we say about Scripture.  Rather than being of central or foundational importance, they are implications of our belief in the trustworthiness of the Bible.

What follows is a summary of Ward’s views on this subject.  (I have set out my own views elsewhere).

‘Infallibility’ is often taken to mean that the Bible is entirely trustworthy is matters of faith and conduct.…

The teacher

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When, recently, I was asked to give a very short account of the role of the teacher of the word of God, this was the outline I came up with:-

  1. The teacher’s conviction – 2 Tim 3:16 ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.’
  2. The teacher’s vocation – Eph 4:11 ‘It was [Christ] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.’
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