Search Results (181)

The grammar and syntax of Philippians 3.3 presents a number of ambiguities, particularly in terms of the grammatical object of the verb “worship” (Gk. λατρεύοντες). Most modern translations render the middle phrase of the verse as “worship by the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus” (e.g., CSB, ESV, NLT, NRSV, RSV, etc.). This rendering implies an intransitive use of λατρεύοντες. However, the word order of the verse, as well as the parsing of λατρεύοντες, strongly suggest it is better to understand “Christ Jesus” as the grammatical object of the verb. This essay challenges the prevailing translation of the verse, and argues that the middle phrase should better be translated as “by the Spirit worship and boast in Christ Jesus,” to reflect the grammatical relation between “worship” and “Christ Jesus.” This re-rendering is highly significant for our understanding of Paul’s Christology, as well as contemporary debates over early vs. late high Christology, as it shows points towards Jesus being worshipped as a divine figure by the early Christians, even as early the lifetime of the Apostle. Full article

Numerous researchers have linked the description of the New Jerusalem in Rev 21 to Fallen Babylon in Rev 18 in order to establish intertextual opportunities for comparison and contrast. However, the New Jerusalem is seldom linked to the Tower of Babel in Gen 11—essentially, the urban archetype of Babylon in the Old Testament. Exploring these two urban metaphors—from a largely canonical, theological perspective—it appears that the New Jerusalem and the Tower of Babel stand out as two urban expressions of theological contrast. The two city metaphors contrast each other as they relate to themes of builders, unity/diversity, and temple language when describing divine and human activities. Full article

Clouds appear as a cross-culturally useful literary device in Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian sources. This paper argues that the cloud travel in the apocryphal Acts of Andrew and Matthias functions in three ways: as a transformative callback to Jesus’s ascension and coming return, as a demonstration of Andrew’s power over natural elements, and as a secure form of transportation away from the difficulties of other travel methods. The author of the text combines the divine protection found in clouds in Greco-Roman literature with the theophanies found in the Septuagint and the New Testament to create this cloud-travel motif that later reappears in the apocryphal sequel Acts of Peter and Andrew. Full article

This article examines the scholarship of John Allegro on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the role his status as a scholar has played in the reception of his The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. While the Dead Sea Scrolls play no prominent role in the book, people promoting Sacred Mushroom and its unorthodox proposals stress that Allegro is a respected scholar with great philological acumen by appealing to status as an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls. But Allegro’s contribution to the field is much more mixed than is often acknowledged by proponents of Sacred Mushroom. Allegro was also one of the first to promote the corrosive conspiracy theory that the rest of the editorial team was being controlled by the Vatican. Recognizing that Allegro’s scholarship is infused with a kind of conspiratorial ideation helps understand his method and approach in Sacred Mushroom—that the evidence that Christianity began as a sacred mushroom cult was intentionally obscured by New Testament authors. To agree with Allegro, one must grant that the evidence is hidden and below the surface. The renewed popularity for Allegro’s work, which is out of sync with his reputation among Qumran scholars, can be understood as one example of the broader phenomenon of the popularity of conspiratorial theories in contemporary culture Full article

This article examines the theological trajectories of Watchman Nee (1903–1972) and Witness Lee (1905–1997) on sanctification, union with Christ, and deification, situating their contributions within recent reappraisals of the doctrine of theosis in the academy. Though deification was universally affirmed by the early church and retained in various forms in medieval and early Protestant theology, post-Reformation Western Christianity marginalized this theme in favor of juridical and forensic soteriological categories. Against this backdrop, Nee and Lee offer a theologically rich, biblically grounded, and experientially oriented articulation of deification that warrants greater scholarly attention. Drawing from the Keswick Holiness tradition, patristic sources, and Christian mysticism, Nee developed a soteriology that integrates justification, sanctification, and glorification within an organic model of progressive union with God. Though he does not explicitly use the term “deification”, the language he employs regarding union and participation closely mirrors classical expressions of Christian theosis. For Nee, sanctification is not merely moral improvement but the transformative increase of the divine life, culminating in conformity to Christ’s image. Lee builds upon and expands Nee’s participatory soteriology into a comprehensive theology of deification, explicitly referring to it as “the high peak of the divine revelation” in the Holy Scriptures. For Lee, humans become God “in life and nature but not in the Godhead”. By employing the phrase “not in the Godhead”, Lee upholds the Creator–creature distinction—i.e., humans never participate in the ontological Trinity or God’s incommunicable attributes. Yet, in the first portion of his description, he affirms that human beings undergo an organic, transformative process by which they become God in deeply significant ways. His framework structures sanctification as a seven-stage process, culminating in the believer’s transformation and incorporation into the Body of Christ to become a constituent of a corporate God-man. This corporate dimension—often overlooked in Western accounts—lies at the heart of Lee’s ecclesiology, which he sees as being consummated in the eschatological New Jerusalem. Ultimately, this study argues that Nee and Lee provide a coherent, non-speculative model of deification that integrates biblical exegesis, theological tradition, and practical spirituality, and thus, present a compelling alternative to individualistic and forensic soteriologies while also highlighting the need for deeper engagement across global theological discourse on sanctification, union with Christ, and the Triune God. Full article

This study investigates the theological function of the contemporary worship song “The Blessing” by addressing the following guiding research question: in what ways does “The Blessing” function as a form of prophetic declaration and communal prayer in contemporary congregational worship? Drawing on frameworks from Pentecostal theology, lyrical theology, and performative speech-act theory, this study analyzes how the song’s language, structure, and performance embody Spirit-enabled proclamation and intercession. Engaging Rice’s Evagrian–LAPT grammar, Glenn Packiam’s theology of worship as encounter, and Steven Félix-Jäger’s model of New Testament prophecy, the textual analysis focuses on the song’s present-tense verbs of divine action and its lyrical constructions. Scripturally grounded in Numbers 6:24–26, “The Blessing” operates as a sung benediction that invokes God’s blessing, sanctification, divine favor and protection, covenantal presence, and peace. The repetitive use of “Amen” functions as a communal seal of affirmation, turning passive reception into active, prophetic participation when sung. This study contends that the song exemplifies how contemporary congregational song serves as primary theology—Spirit-inspired, embodied, and sounded—where proclamation and prayer are nurtured in lived worship. Ultimately, “The Blessing” functions as a pneumatological and ecclesial act of sung prophecy and intercession—an instance of primary theologizing that nurtures the worshiping community and mediates a Spirit-empowered encounter with divine hope. Full article

Interpretation of the New Testament (NT) in general and the Pauline corpus in particular still appears to be at a crossroads. Scholars continue to publish articles and monographs in binary opposition to one another. The terminology used to designate the overarching perspectives of these binary publications sharply contrasts a “traditional” perspective (Protestant in general, and Lutheran in particular) with a variously named “new” or “radical new” perspective. Most recently, beyond the imprecise “new” terminology, the non-traditional perspective is being referred to as the “post-supersessionist”, “nonsupersessionist”, or “within Judaism” perspective and is still strongly being contested. Historically speaking, these antithetical perspectives cannot both be completely correct. Arguably, then, the time has come to explore what the study of Kuhnian paradigms might reveal about this state of affairs in NT scholarship. Most important, in proffering a twofold hermeneutical way forward that is focused on better understanding the emic perspective of the texts that we interpret—to the extent humanly possible—it is hoped that we might become more keenly aware of the ethical implications of our paradigms, terminology, and exegesis for those who rely on our work for their understanding and appropriation of the Scriptures in their everyday living. Full article

Domestication is a translation theory in which the source text (to be translated) is matched to the foreign reader by erasing its original linguistic and cultural difference. This match aims at making the target text (translated text) more fluent. On the contrary, foreignization is a translation theory in which the foreign reader is matched to the source text. This paper mathematically explores the degree of domestication/foreignization in current translation practice of texts written in alphabetical languages. A geometrical representation of texts, based on linear combinations of deep–language parameters, allows us (a) to calculate a domestication index which measures how much domestication is applied to the source text and (b) to distinguish language families. An expansion index measures the relative spread around mean values. This paper reports statistics and results on translations of (a) Greek New Testament books in Latin and in 35 modern languages, belonging to diverse language families; and (b) English novels in Western languages. English and French, although attributed to different language families, mathematically almost coincide. The requirement of making the target text more fluent makes domestication, with varying degrees, universally adopted, so that a blind comparison of the same linguistic parameters of a text and its translation hardly indicates that they refer to each other. Full article

The topos of Vienna as the “stronghold of Christendom” emerged soon after the 1529 unsuccessful siege by the Ottomans. The city’s new strategic status not only spurred the building of new urban fortifications, it also stimulated the production of a large variety of printed texts and pictures that emphasized the necessity of Christian unity among divided Christians. In this context, this article aims to shed new light on the use of one Old Testament episode whose significance and polysemy has been largely overlooked for sixteenth-century Vienna: the attack of Jerusalem by the Assyrian King Sennacherib and his subsequent defeat through divine intervention under the city wall. Instrumental in defining a common spiritual approach to the fight, this Old Testament story can be considered a seminal basis for the paradigm of Vienna as a Jerusalem of unity and unanimity. To analyze the significance of this theme in Vienna, this article will first focus on its representation in Hanns Lautensack’s 1558/1559 famous cityscape before demonstrating that it originated from a far less known source: the 1532 sermons by the Bishop Johann Fabri. Full article

The Traditio Apostolica presents, within the context of Christian baptism, first the water baptism accompanied by a profession of faith, followed by prayer with the laying on of hands. The purpose of this initiation process is the forgiveness of sins, which is more strongly implied in the water rite, and the gift of the Spirit, which is implied in the laying on of hands. This sequence of baptism and laying on of hands, in connection with faith and Spirit reception, is also evident in Acts 19:1–7. Apart from Acts 8:5–25, however, it is the only passage that links baptism with laying on of hands followed by Spirit reception. Moreover, it is the only instance of a rebaptism within the Lukan double work. The focus of this article is not primarily on the question of the historicity of this rite during the New Testament period but on a narratological-intratextual analysis of the relationship between baptism and Spirit reception, that is, to what extent the reader, against the background of the preceding narrative in Luke-Acts, is led to an understanding of this relationship and its significance for becoming a Christian. The article argues that faith plays a decisive role in the Christian initiation process. Full article

The core focus of the study of Patristics (generally also called Patrology) has been the teachings and practices of the so-called Fathers and Mothers of the early Christian Church (or the leading exponents of the Christian Faith, primarily from after the times of Jesus of Nazareth and the writings of the New Testament to the so-called Early Middle Ages (or the emergence of Islam) (e [...] Full article

For almost forty years, scholars of the Bible have drawn on the conglomerate field of migration studies to illuminate historical contexts and to exegete biblical texts. This paper recognizes the rich contributions supplied across the decades by such interdisciplinary scholarship. It offers a rejoinder to this work by exploring how biblical scholars might balance the interdisciplinary scales through reciprocal contributions to migration studies. The response is structured in three movements. First, I present the biblical corpus as a migration-informed and migration-informing artifact that has influenced perceptions of and engagements with migration for more than two millennia. The second part of the paper presents three avenues biblical scholars might pursue in their approaches to migration scholars as interlocutors. Finally, my conclusion offers closing reflections on ways biblical scholars might more appropriately prepare themselves for further interdisciplinary mutuality. Full article

This paper explores the role of biblical exegesis in doctrinal theology. It does so through the lens of Karl Barth’s lectures on New Testament texts given at the University of Göttingen between 1921 and 1925. Contemporary critiques of the 1919 and 1921 editions of his commentary on Romans, particularly his exchange of open letters with Adolf von Harnack in 1923, contributed to several significant developments in Barth’s understanding and practice of biblical exegesis. In this short period, Barth honed his skills in close reading of New Testament texts, achieving a sharper sense of the relation between what New Testament writers said and what their texts now say than he had in Romans. Full article

This paper offers a new explanation for the quotation of Psalm 68:18 in Ephesians 4:8. There are at least three puzzles in this text: (1) the significance of the quotation within the argument in the Ephesians passage (and why the apparent interruption between 4:7 and 4:11); (2) the divergent form of the quotation from the MT and LXX vis-a-vis the giving of gifts versus receiving; (3) why is only one set of gifts—proclaiming/verbal gifts, not gifts of service or discernment—mentioned in 4:11–12? This paper argues three points. First, diversity of spiritual gifts is not the focus of Eph 4:7–16, but rather, the same gift given to many: the word of truth about Jesus’s identity as Messiah and Son of God and his resurrection. Second, Ephesians 4:8–10 is comprehensible in context if viewed through another lens: Romans 10:6–8, the motif of “Messiah ascending victorious after having previously descended”. Third, the invocation of Psalm 68:18 in Ephesians 4:8–10 matches the Aramaic textual tradition, over-against the MT and the LXX. Paul’s use of the verse mirrors the proto-Targumic understanding of the “gifts given to the sons of mankind” as the Law of Moses. Paul is adopting this motif of “ascending with the Law-truth”, but with his own implied substitution of “the truth about Jesus”. Full article

This article explores how literary features are statistically distributed in the Christian apostle Paul’s letters. While several decades of occasional research have applied statistics to Paul’s letters, most if not all previous such approaches have either assumed that Paul’s language follows a normal distribution or ignored the question of statistical distribution entirely. The nature of feature distribution—be the features vocabulary words or second-order features chosen by the analyst—is a crucial component of any statistical analysis, and the dearth of work in this area therefore forms a major hole in mathematical approaches to Paul’s letters. This paper addresses this hole in scholarship by comparing two possible models for Paul’s various literary techniques: the Poisson distribution versus the negative binomial distribution. Full article