At the Jerusalem Council (Acts 19:6–21), James quotes Amos in a way that some have interpreted in a way that sees him spiritualizing promises that God made to Israel and applying them to the church. I do not think that this is what he was doing, though. James was using the plain grammatical-historical method of interpretation, which includes Amos’s original context as well as James’ context in Acts.
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Hebrew
Linguistic Problems with Lordship Salvation in James 2:14–26
Last month, I posted the text and a translation of James 2:14–26. Since then, I have modified the translation and written some commentary that emphasises the article. You can read it below or download the pdf here:
pmiles James 2 translation and commentary
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Thoughts on Russia, Ukraine, and the Bible
Russophobia is emerging around the world. There are individuals in the Russian government who are making evil decisions that affect Russia and other countries—Putin comes to mind, as do others who may not be as familiar to Western readers—but these are not grounds to resent Russian people. Within the Russian population are plenty of believers who are doing excellent work in a dark place. They are to be commended (if not now, then they will certainly be rewarded later).[Read More]
The Prophet of Deut. 18:15 (TL;DR; it’s Messiah)
There is a debate as to whether Deuteronomy 18:15 refers to the Messiah, or Joshua, or maybe even both or more. It seems to me that Messiah is in view here.[Read More]
Ancient Forerunners to Theistic Evolution: The Cosmological Compromise and Ramifications of רקיע in the LXX
We had our first event for the International Society for Biblical Hermeneutics. It was a webinar on “Topics in Cosmology.” I spoke on the raqia of Genesis. You can watch the presentation above. We will be posting it to a future ISBH website, so stay tuned!
Response to “Luke’s Gay Apocalypse” Part I: Intro and Word Studies
This is part one of a response to a post by Jeremy Myers. In that post, Myers summarizes the view of Ron Goetz, which proposes that Luke 17:34–35 is about saved non-celibate homosexuals. While I believe that there are saved non-celibate homosexuals, I disagree with the process of forcing a gay reading into this text (especially by using Document Q and Pagan mythology).[Read More]