Some of the oddest pieces of the Bible to many of us today are the long sections taken up with genealogies. We can be excused for asking why, considering the great expense of writing materials in the ancient world, biblical authors felt the need to include this content at all. Moreover, thinking of the Bible … Continue reading Understanding Biblical Genres: Genealogies
Yesterday in this series on understanding the literary genres of the Bible, we looked at myths – the big stories around which civilizations, are built. I identified four such stories in the Bible: Creation, Exodus, Deuteronomy/Exile, and, for Christians, the story of Jesus. But of course not all ancient stories told around campfires would have … Continue reading Understanding Biblical Genres: Legends
One of the few things that unites all Christians is a love for the Bible. But, the Bible is a difficult document — or rather, library of documents — to approach, having been written by dozens of voices in different cultures and languages, across a period of roughly a thousand years, the most recent pieces … Continue reading Reading the Bible Better: Understanding Biblical Genres
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the history of how Christians have read their Bibles. While the Bible has always had an important place in the life of Christians and our faith communities, we have understood both the Scriptures and their role in remarkably diverse ways. In some times and places, the … Continue reading Reading the Bible Better Today: Lessons from the Past
By the late 1970s, Christian theology and biblical studies appeared to be at an impasse. On the one hand, historical criticism in its various guises was still going strong; for example E.P. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism was published in 1977, introducing the revolutionary ‘New Perspective on Paul’. But on the other hand, the Evangelical … Continue reading The Power of Story: Narrative Criticism
Matthew Root 