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 →
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: 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 →
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 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 →
What did ex-pagans and Jews expect when they became followers of Jesus? This is the question that Alex Finkelson addresses in his recent post "What kind of blessings did the churches inherit from Israel?" As Finkelson discusses, the various promises made to the patriarchs and even to king David are tangible: a literal kingdom in... Continue Reading →
You didn't want it, ask for it, or need it, but nevertheless the Weekly Roundup has returned! Andre Gagne (PhD, Université catholique de Louvain/Université de Montréal) posted the first in a series on eschatology entitled "Unraveling the 'End Times,'" complete with that charming Canadian accent we've all come to love in our neighbors to the... Continue Reading →
Apart from the first few chapters of Genesis, no other book of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures has been so hotly debated as the book of Revelation. The reason for this is obvious from even a cursory reading: the book is filled with strange imagery that is foreign to modern readers. Consider the description of... Continue Reading →
I grew up going to a King James Only, dispensational, fundamentalist, Baptist church from the age of five to the age of eighteen when I went to college at a King James Only, dispensational, fundamentalist, Baptist college. Though it wasn't talked about a whole lot, when the book of Revelation and the topic of eschatology... Continue Reading →
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