Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has just completed a five-volume series on the Torah under the heading Covenant and Conversation. The blurb from the first volume, on Genesis, comments: In this first volume of a five-volume collection of parashat hashavua commentaries, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks explores these intersections as they relate to universal concerns of freedom, love, responsibility, …
Dr Clint Burnett is Lecturer of New Testament at Johnson University in Knoxville, Tennessee USA, and has just published Studying the NT Through Inscriptions: An Introduction (Hendrickson, 2020), and I had previously heard him present some of his research at the annual Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) conference. I asked him about his research, and why inscriptions …
Richard Briggs writes: The Bible does not begin with trouble. It actually begins with a gloriously peaceful creation story, stripped of concerns with competing powers, other gods, original chaos, and the politics of ancient Israel battling its way through the nations. Hence Genesis 1: six days of divine creative work, all pretty good, as we have …
Ian Macnair wrote what I decided when teaching was the best book for teaching introductory NT Greek, which continues in print as Teach Yourself New Testament Greek. I had the chance to ask Ian about the book and his approach to learning. IP: Most people think that learning Greek is just for academics reading the New …
Amongst all the other confusions around ‘fake news’ and conspiracy theories associated with the coronavirus Covid-19, we might not be surprised that there has been a rash of claims that the Book of Revelation (miraculously) predicted all this 2,000 years ago. Rather than look at any one of these in detail, I here make observations …
Richard Briggs writes: What does Genesis 1 say about the goodness of creation? It says it was good, indeed very good. What that does and does not mean is my main focus. It brings with it two related questions: what does this have to teach us about how we live? and secondly, because I can never …
I write a column for Preach magazine, in which I explore a significant word or phrase in the Bible and the ideas that it expresses. The first one was on the phrase ‘Word of God’, and second on ‘Justice’ and the third on ‘Mission’. This one, published in Preach Magazine issue 23 Chaos and Truth, explored the …
Robin Ham writes: I had the opportunity last week to hear a presentation from Osoba Otaigbe of Bible Society about their Lumino Research Project on attitudes to the Bible. I’d heard the research referenced previously in passing, but this was the first time I’d looked at it in detail. If you’ve not come across it, it’s …
This Sunday is the Feast of Pentecost, when we remember, celebrate and re-engage with the first giving of the Spirit at Pentecost as recounted in Acts 2. With any of these annual celebrations, we are always confronted with the question of whether there is anything fresh to say. Commentators note that this is one of …
The lectionary reading for the Third Sunday in Easter in Year A is Luke 24.13–35, the very well known story of Jesus drawing alongside the two disciples on their journey to the village of Emmaus. The narrative is long and detailed, but it is also wonderfully engaging, not only beautifully structured, but full of irony …
The lectionary readings for the Third Sunday in Easter ignore the particular gospel for the year, and instead cycle round Luke 24 and John 21: in Year B we have the second half of Luke 24, Jesus meeting the group of frightened disciples; in Year C, the miraculous catch of fish in John 21; and …
