Josh Moody on John 1–12

Every month, The Good Book Company make available digital versions of one of their books at no charge. This month (November 2022) it’s John 1–12 For You by Josh  Moody, which is available in exchange for an email address here.

Themelios 43, 3 (December 2018)

The latest Themelios is online here (and available here as a single pdf), containing the below articles.

Editorial

D.A. Carson

The Changing Face of Words

Strange Times

Daniel Strange

Meta-Madness

Eric Ortlund

How Did Job Speak Rightly about God?

Yahweh’s stated preference for Job’s speech toward him in opposition to the friends in Job 42:7 is difficult to understand in light of the many criticisms Job levels against God in the course of the debate and the many seemingly pious and biblically supportable claims which the friends made. A variety of proposed interpretations of this verse are considered and rejected. It is argued instead that even when Job curses creation in ch. 3, he shows how much he values the friendship with God which he thinks he has now (inexplicably) lost; even when he rails against what seems to be a guilty verdict in chs. 9–10, Job shows how profoundly he understands that human claims of righteousness must be substantiated by God to have any worth. In these ways and others, Job spoke rightly about God even when he criticized.

Susanna Baldwin

Miserable but Not Monochrome: The Distinctive Characteristics and Perspectives of Job’s Three Comforters

Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite are often perceived as delivering an essentially uniform message that (erroneously) upholds the rigid, retributive justice of God as the answer to Job’s devastating plight. This paper presents a more nuanced and individualised examination of Job’s three comforters. Through a textual and thematic exploration of each friend’s corpus of speeches, the case is put that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar embody three subtly differentiated worldviews and epistemic frameworks. Consequently, each is shown to develop his own unique line of argument with regard to the origins and mechanisms of human suffering and the means by which Job may attain deliverance and restoration.

Andreas J. Köstenberger

John’s Appropriation of Isaiah’s Signs Theology: Implications for the Structure of John’s Gospel

The present article explores John’s distinct use of “signs” as part of his “theological transposition” of the Synoptic Gospels by which John transforms the Synoptic concept of “miracle” into that of “signs” pointing to Jesus’s messianic identity. The article proposes that Isaiah was the source for John’s signs theology by demonstrating significant links between Isaiah’s and John’s use of signs. In addition, the article proposes that John was led by Isaiah to structure his Gospel according to Jesus’s signs: the first half containing “The Book of Signs,” and the second half conveying the reality to which the signs point.

Will N. Timmins

Why Paul Wrote Romans: Putting the Pieces Together

Close attention to the content and context of Romans suggests that Paul had three purposes in view in writing the letter – namely, a missionary purpose, a pastoral purpose, and an apologetic purpose. This article explores these three purposes, explains their interrelationships, and considers some neglected evidence.

Joseph Pak

Self-Deception in Theology

Self-deception is a fundamental experience and the starting point of philosophy since Socrates. This article discusses a few aspects of self-deception as a theological concept. Self-deception is closely related to sin, often creates false assurance of salvation, and is caused by disordered love. Diligent effort to gain self-awareness is vitally important to prevent self-deception. We can counteract self-deception by acknowledging its pervasive and universal presence, opening ourselves to self- examination and questioning, and avowing disavowed engagements. God often uses trials to bring us out of self-deception.

John B. Carpenter

Answering Eastern Orthodox Apologists regarding Icons

The Eastern Orthodox Church claims that their practices have been preserved unaltered from the early church, thus making them the pristine church in perfect continuity with the apostolic church. Eastern Orthodox Apologists use this claim to offer potential converts certainty amid competing truth claims. In particular, they claim that the early church venerated images (icons) in the liturgy just as the Eastern Orthodox (and often Roman Catholics) do now. However, a careful examination of the evidence, both archaeological and written, reveals that despite the claim to continuity with the early church, the Eastern Orthodox practices of iconography directly contradict the consistent teachings of the early church. The early church, with only varying degrees of vehemence, strictly prohibited icons. This article engages typical Eastern Orthodox Apologists’ strategies for dealing with the evidence of the early church while maintaining their claims to continuity and argues that there is no evidence for the use of icons in the early church.

Ernie Laskaris

The New Atheist Sledgehammer: Like Epistemological Air Boxing

In one of the chief works produced by the New Atheists, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion set out to reduce the existence of God to an “almost certain” impossibility. While his words are firm and belittling, however, Dawkins fails to cause any legitimate damage to the theistic worldview. This article identifies three reasons why the New Atheist sledgehammer has widely missed its target. First, Dawkins demonstrates a deficient understanding of the God he seeks to extinguish. Second, he is unable to account for certain concepts that he appeals to in his arguments (logical absolutes, the uniformity of nature, and moral absolutes). Third, he repeatedly violates the commitments of his naturalistic materialism, resorting to metaphysical speculation on multiple occasions.

Book Reviews

Currents in Biblical Research 15, 2 (February 2017)

The latest Currents in Biblical Research recently arrived, with titles and abstracts of the main articles as below.

Andrew M. Mbuvi

African Biblical Studies: An Introduction to an Emerging Discipline

African Biblical Studies (ABS) can be characterized both as innovative and reactionary: Innovative, because it refuses to be confined by the methodologies, ancient concerns, and principles that govern biblical studies in the ‘west’ (used throughout this article to refer to the majority Euro-American scholars while recognizing the presence of other groups), and instead charts a course that is more interested in making biblical interpretation relevant to present realities. Reactionary, because its driving force is partly a critique of the inadequacy of western biblical studies in providing meaningful responses to concerns that are pertinent to African communities. A genuine ABS is therefore an amalgamation of multiple interpretive methods, approaches and foci that reflect a creative engagement of the African cosmological reality and the Bible.

Kelly J. Murphy

Judges in Recent Research

The book of Judges continues to inspire research and interpretation, from an ongoing focus on traditional research methods such as historical criticism and redaction criticism, to newer approaches like cultural criticism and postcolonial readings. This article surveys recent research on the book of Judges since 2003 by separating the discussion into two sections: the first section traces current research on the overall book of Judges as well as specific characters and/or passages, while the second section notes two growing areas of research; namely, reception history and gender studies.

Nicholas G. Piotrowski

The Concept of Exile in Late Second Temple Judaism: A Review of Recent Scholarship

Before Wright published the first two volumes of his Christian Origins and the Question of God series (1992; 1996) the discussion concerning late Second Temple Jewish concepts of exile was a quiet one. Since then, however, more and more scholars have begun to weigh in. Champions of the theory contend that Second Temple texts convey a matrix of concerns that together demonstrate a Jewish consciousness of being in a state of ongoing exile, notwithstanding the residency in the land of a significant population and a functioning temple. Dissenters argue that these scholars are illegitimately privileging one motif within a highly complex ancient religion, and assigning it a metanarrative role it never truly had. Others contend that ‘ongoing’ exile is too narrow of a description to account for the diversity of attitudes across several sects. Only recently, though, have major works been produced that thoroughly examine the primary texts in question. In the process, a growing chorus of voices is supporting, with various levels of enthusiasm, the thesis that a significant number of late Second Temple Jewish groups indeed understood themselves to be languishing in some form of exile: ongoing exile since the sixth century bce, in the throes of recurring cycles of exile, or a set of historic realities characterized with exilic metaphors.

Joshua Coutts

‘My Father’s Name’: A Survey of Research on the Use of Onoma with Respect to the Father in the Fourth Gospel

This essay provides a survey of research for one distinctive feature of the Fourth Gospel, namely, the striking emphasis on ‘name’ (onoma) language used with reference to the Father. The small existing body of research on John’s divine name concept may be situated in the context of a resurgent interest in the question of ‘God’ in the Fourth Gospel, and alongside broader New Testament research focused on the application of ‘kyrios’ to Jesus or on the divine functions attributed to Jesus’ own name. The research that has focused on John’s use of the divine name may be divided into two groups: there are attempts to identify the background to John’s name concept, including proposals for a Jewish hypostatic name concept, targumic tradition or the text of Isaiah; and studies which analyse John’s name language have sought to locate its meaning within the context of the Gospel itself.

Robert L. Plummer on John 13:1 and 19:30

There’s another helpful weekend video here from Robert L. Plummer, looking at the literary bracket between τέλος (telos) in John 13:1 (‘he loved them to the end’) and τετέλεσται (tetelestai) in 19:40 (‘It is finished’).

Catherine Playoust on Gathering and Scattering

Catherine Playoust, ‘A Time to Scatter, a Time to Gather’, Pacifica 23, 1 (2010), 1-14.

One of the leitmotifs of London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, where I work, is the distinction between the church as ‘gathered’ (coming together as one body for worship, teaching, sacraments, etc.) and ‘scattered’ (in the various places we find ourselves during the week). While both aspects are crucial and interdependent, ecclesiology can tend to focus on the former to the neglect of the latter.

So, I was interested to see this article (available from here) by Catherine Playoust devoted to the theme of scattering and gathering. She does a nice job of summarising the main uses of this image in Scripture itself:

‘In deciding what to include, I didn’t go in search of particular Greek or Hebrew words, but looked for places in which these ideas came up. They emerged in three main contexts, often interlocking: the sowing of seed to produce a harvest that will be gathered in; the dispersal of a multitude and its subsequent restoration to its own land; and the assembly of a group for a particular occasion, after which the members of the assembly are sent out to various places with the group’s goals in mind’ (2).

A brief exploration of these gives way to a more extended look at the gospel of John, where she notes that ‘instead of the crucifixion being the time of scattering and sorrow, to be followed by gathering and joy at the resurrection, the gathering and joy happen already at the crucifixion’ (11).