Here's the script for episode 4 of this season of 'Amateur Exegesis.'
Script for Amateur Exegesis – Season 2, Episode 4:”Turned to God from Idols”
Martinus C. de Boer: Why Is God’s Intervention Needed in Jewish and Pauline Apocalyptic Eschatology?
From Martinus C. de Boer, Paul: Theologian of God's Apocalypse: Essays on Paul and Apocalyptic (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020), 208-209.
Katapetasma (Blogger): The Healing of the Nations and the Exorcism in Gerasa
Katapetasma, "The Demonized Gerasene and the Paganized Greek: Eschatological Allegory in Mark 5:1-20" (8.17.20), scribesofthekingdom686237748.wordpress.com. When the Gerasene man is at last healed and the Legion is expelled into the sea, he comes to represent Greeks cured of idolatry and relieved of its symptoms (cf. Revelation 22:2). Like the nations liberated from the power of... Continue Reading →
An “Eschatological Allegory” – Katapetasma on the Exorcism of the Demon-Possessed Man of Gerasa
It seems that every time I read a post by blogger Katapetasma that I walk away from it not only having learned quite a bit but also envious that I lack the insight and writing ability to bring biblical texts to life as he so effortlessly seems to do. (And that, kids, is why you should read to become... Continue Reading →
Paula Fredriksen: Paul’s Ninth Symphony and His “Ode to Joy”
Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans' Apostle (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 160-161. If the letter to the Romans is Paul's Ninth Symphony, Romans 11.11 begins its fourth movement, Paul's own "Ode to Joy." Alle Menschen werden Brüder, and the apostle, divining God's plan, knows how. Too many gentiles? No: more, in fact, will... Continue Reading →
A Conversation with Non-Alchemist
Yesterday evening I had the privilege of speaking with @AlchemistNon over on his YouTube channel. Topics included deconversion, inerrancy, contradictions in the Bible, philosophy of religion, and more. For those unfamiliar with @AlchemistNon, he is an agnostic who has had a similar trajectory religiously as I have had (minus the KJV Onlyism, the stint at... Continue Reading →
J. David Woodington: Fire as an Eschatological Motif of Judgment
J. David Woodington, "Crafting the Eschaton: The Second Death and the Lake of Fire in Revelation," Journal for the Study of the New Testament, vol 41 no 4 (2019), 508. The need to clarify what type of punishment the second death entails explains why John might have decided to identify this concept with a place... Continue Reading →
Bart Ehrman: Resurrection and Immortality
Bart D. Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 125. In the later Jewish doctrine of the resurrection, God reverses death by bringing the breath of life back into the body, ensuring it will never die again. Unlike in the Greek tradition, here the person is made immortal. Immortality is... Continue Reading →
Did John Know the Synoptics? The Latest Episode of NT Review
The most recent episode of New Testament Review is a crossover with Mark Goodacre’s NT Pod and covers Percy Gardner Smith’s Saint John and the Synoptic Gospels. Readers of the canonical Gospels know that the fourth Gospel is an odd duck. Some have suggested that it was composed without any knowledge of the Synoptics and the presence of pericopes similar... Continue Reading →
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