The intro to the Reading the Bible in 3D seminar mentions the “jokes” in the Bible. In his book Deep Exegesis, Peter Leithart gives us a rundown on what a joke is to justify using the word to describe some of the allusions in Scripture. One of the reasons jokes are funny is their reliance on inside information.
Here’s my all-time favourite joke in the Bible.
What Is Revelation Really About?
“For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land…”
(Haggai 2:6)
Many modern commentators hamstring various parts of the Bible so they don’t run against the grain of modern scientism and historical revisionism. They do this by “classifying” the bits of Scripture that offend modern theory into neat literary genres. “If Genesis is poetry, it can’t be historical,” and other stupidities. Nice try. Another one is “apocalyptic,” a genre which, to the eye of unbelief, might appear to actually exist.
One of the reasons why moderns (including Christians) don’t really know what to do with the Mosaic Law is the failure to understand biblical history as a process of maturation. The prohibition of the second (kingly) tree in the Garden corresponds to the Food Laws, for instance. Like Israel’s temporary abstinence from meat (kingly food) in the wilderness, these laws were all for the purpose of humbling, for preparing servants to rule as God’s representatives. Once mature, they would be invited to eat with God as friends, rather than merely attending as servants.
Were the Nephilim in Genesis 6 angels or aliens?
The Nephilim (“great” or “amazing”) were the first “mighty men” of the Bible. They were the result of the intermarriage between the priestly sons of Seth and the rebellious Cainite kings. The text gives us a split genealogy after the murder of Abel, priests serving God outside the garden, and Cain’s false kingdom (Cain went and built a “fortress” to protect himself). So, humanity was divided into two camps: those who served God as their king and those who rebelled against Him.
Most of what you have been taught about the Bible — especially by modern experts — is wrong. The dumb things John Dickson said about Genesis 1 on ABCTV this week are a prime example. Academics are capable of astounding levels of cognitive dissonance. Yes, the texts are ancient, but the ancients weren’t idiots, especially when it came to chronology. Treating the text as a myth throws the entire Bible’s chronology out the window. It’s not the ancients who are the idiots in this case.
Here’s four talks given this week in London by James Jordan. Let him clear away the clutter for you, especially if you are in ministry and have been taught some of the incredibly dumb things invented by those well-meaning but misguided modernist dunderheads in the academies. Learn to read the Bible with new eyes…
“Jacob didn’t steal the future. He rescued it from a Man who put food first and whose eyes were not yet opened.”
James Jordan has done the Church a great service by rehabilitating the reputations of Noah the drunk, Abraham the liar, Jacob the swindler and Moses the murderer. He has shown us that the context of these so-called sins and crimes mean that they are nothing of the sort. [1] By this, I don’t mean “cultural context” but Covenant context. The reason these great men of God (and their wonderful women) get such a bad rap is because their stories are treated like a bunch of separate things that occurred, from which we must draw obvious and disconnected morals, rather than a single narrative begun in Genesis 1.
“The solution here is not, as Calvin believed, to dress the New Covenant’s ethical maturity in the puerile clothing of paedobaptism.”
In The Failure of the American Baptist Culture [PDF], James Jordan, Ray Sutton and others expose the rot at the heart of baptistic theology, which is inherently man-centred. The authors call us from a view of salvation in isolation to a wider vision of the meaning of baptism, which signifies the broader realities of the Covenant of Grace. I learned a great deal about history and Reformed theology, and thoroughly recommend it to you. In my view, however, they don’t go far enough. A call to understand the vital historical connection between circumcision and baptism certainly deals with the errors of the Anabaptists, but when rightly understood, the progressive nature of revelation also exposes the use of paedobaptism as a connection with the Old Covenant as entirely bogus.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
We have reached the sixth cycle of Numbers, which seems to include chapters 30-34. Seeing as it has been a while since we looked at Numbers, here’s the overview again, with this next cycle in red.
Overview of Numbers
Bible Matrix blog
