MSH | February 15, 2013
The Bible Places Blog (BPB) draws our attention to a new book edited by James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis R. Magary entitled, Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith?: A Critical Appraisal of Modern and Postmodern Approaches to Scripture. It looks like a quality resource. It’s focus is on how biblical historicity matters for inspiration and [...]
MSH | February 8, 2013
In the last installment of this series, I directed readers to the short essay by J. Levenson, “Poverty and the State in Biblical Thought” (13 pp). Levenson is a Jewish biblical scholar and a favorite of mine. I think the article is important for helping us think about the relationship of the Israelite state to poverty [...]
MSH | December 4, 2012
I’m hoping that by now those interested will have read the ABD essay I posted on terms for poverty and the poor in the Old Testament. In case readers did not take it upon themselves to do so, here is another PDF of the actual OT occurrences of each of the OT words for the [...]
MSH | November 28, 2012
I’ve decided to embark on an exploration of poverty and social justice with respect to the biblical text. “Social justice” is currently a hot-button issue and, in my view, is a term easily manipulated by politicians and theologians who want to wield political influence. In other words, this is an area where the Bible becomes [...]
MSH | October 27, 2012
When God tells Samuel, Israel’s judge, to anoint a king for Israel according to their demands with the words “they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Sam 8:7), manyBible readers and students assume that the institution of kingship was theologically disallowed for Israel. That’s a common [...]
