Lately, I have been doing some work with the Book of Ezra, which begins with Cyrus’ decree that was issued, “that the word of Jehovah by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished” (Ezra 1:1). Ezra does not actually quote Jeremiah, but assumes that the reader is biblically literate. The work that I am doing will explore the biblical issues further, but as I studied for that project, I came across some archaeological items that are worth discussing here.[Read More]
archaeology
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]
Three Arguments not to Make in the Chronology Debate
The Patterns of Evidence documentary series has become popular with evangelicals in recent years. It proposes a revised chronology based on David Rohl’s work that shortens the Egyptian timeline such that the Exodus weakened Egypt’s army, making them vulnerable for an invasion and occupation that’s known as the Hyksos Period (aka the Second Intermediate Period). Others who accept the historicity of the Exodus will typically say that Israel was enslaved during the Hyksos Period and left sometime afterwards during the Eighteenth Dynasty.
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Can you tell the difference between an atheist, a liberal, and an evangelical?
Can you tell the difference between an atheist, a liberal, and an evangelical?
Seems like it should be easy enough, right? Well, not exactly…
I have been teaching on apologetics in church lately. A few weeks ago, I did a presentation on bible manuscripts (available here, but only in Russian), and last Sunday, I spoke on the reliability of the biblical autographs (see the whole thing here).
As an introduction to this Sunday’s talk, we played a game. I took quotes from different sources and had our congregation guess if the quote came from an atheist, a liberal, or an evangelical.
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!
Cuneiform and Midrashic stuff related to Micah 5:2
Today we are going to take a look at some extrabiblical resources that you can use to impress your Sunday School the next time Micah 5:2 comes up in a conversation (Micah 5:2 appears as Micah 5:1 in the Hebrew Bible).[Read More]