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Ezekiel As a combination prophet and priest who lived in the thick of the exile, and whose allegorically vivid words not only resemble how earlier prophets expressed themselves, but also have a priestly authority to them (Boadt et al. 338, 339), Ezekiel is credited for writing one of the most detailed accounts of the exile….
Studying Deuteronomy is like watching a time travel movie, or other mind-bending story, where it is hard to tell whether the protagonist is still in the past, or was always in the present, or is in a perpetual loop of appearing in the past, yet still in the present, yet actually in the past, and…
What images come to mind when thinking of the word prophecy? The numerous fantasy movies featuring bearded, pointy-hat wearing wizards peering through a crystal ball and warning of impending doom? Or documentaries about Nostradamus? Or the now debunked predictions about the world ending in 2012, according to the ancient Mayan clock? Regardless of how prophecy…
In the world of theological conversations, the word “God” is the de facto, universal name to describe the supreme Source of Judeo-Christian belief. Yet the etymology of God, just in the Jewish tradition alone, comes from a variety of sources. Further, various names ascribed to God are clearly used in the Torah – which begs…
To understand the Jewish interpretation of the flood story and how it differs from Christianity’s overarching doctrine of Original Sin (beginning with Genesis), three components help piece together the Jewish interpretation puzzle: the sources used to build the narrative about sin, the challenges with defining sin in the Jewish sense versus the Christian understanding, and…
About a month ago, around the time I released Part 4 of this video series, I coincidentally received a message from a new subscriber regarding, believe it or not, covenant! She had watched my “recommended reading” video about the book A Father Who Keeps His Promises by Scott Hahn: In this book, Hahn shows that…
As we close in on the conclusion to this series, and having walked through covenant history and types, what especially makes the covenants between God and the early patriarchs so significant? The answer: God’s revelation. Without this primary purpose, the concept of covenant would not necessarily lose its value, but it would not show the…
Continuing on in this series, we will now look at various types of covenants, Abraham as an example of entering into covenant with God, and the relationship between the Hebrew terms, berit and hesed. Keep in mind, throughout this series, that while the information we are covering goes into some theological depth about covenants and…
In Part 1 of this series, we covered the history of covenant agreements, tracing back to the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia and widely adopted among neighboring cultures, including the Semites. We also briefly covered the origins of the word berit, the Hebrew equivalent to covenant. Keeping this in mind, let’s now explore the types of…
In my journey towards earning a degree in Theology, each class has given me a chance to plunge deep into the Bible, with the help of centuries of scholarship, several types of critical approaches to hermeneutics (a fancy way of saying “interpretation”), and outstanding professors who show students how to navigate this often mind-numbing, twisting…
