Traveling through the Old Testament
Welcome to the Journey!
Click on one of the following links to navigate the site or see below for a few suggested beginning points.
Research Topics
This is the heart of the website! I have collected here most of my published work and grouped it in various topics so you can explore each in turn. Click on the link above for an overview page or go directly to the topic of your choice by clicking the appropriate link below. Not all of the presentations and articles are available online, but I have tried to provide at least a summary of everything. The point of the site is not to provide definitive answers to questions about the Old Testament, but offer reflections on the Old Testament from a fellow traveler.
The picture above is the Nile, while the image behind this text is a model boat from ancient Egypt.
Media
Clink here for links to various presentations, sermons, and podcasts.
What good is a PhD in biblical and theological studies if you do not have a tenure track teaching position? Brittany Kim and I gathered testimonies from people using their doctorate in a variety of creative ways.
Brittany Kim, Andrew King, and I recently began Every Voice: A Center for Kingdom Diversity in Christian Theological Education. The website will eventually contain a database with works by minority and global scholars in a variety of areas related to Christian theological education, but for now it contains several bibliographies related to Old Testament studies as well as a variety of other resources.
The Destruction of the Canaanites: God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation
I recently wrote a short book on the most difficult ethical problem in the Old Testament. Many scholars have written on this in recent years, so I decided my most useful contribution would be a survey of the various approaches to the topic. It is not a “happy” book, but I hope that it is helpful for you as you think through this very difficult topic.
Understanding Old Testament Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches
One of my most recent books surveys the field of Old Testament theology, which is a vast field that is difficult to master because so many different authors have presented different perspectives on it. This book, co-authored with Brittany Kim, gives you a glimpse of those various approaches. Along the way, you’ll experience many wonderful views of the content of the Old Testament!
Beginning the Journey!
A few suggested places to being the journey.
One of the first unique observations I made about the divine warrior in the Old Testament was related to the story about the Amalekites attacking Israel. I noted that two ancient Near Eastern parallels helped readers to understand that Moses raising his hands was at least partially intended to mean that he was praying. This began a long journey of getting these ideas published, a story that I talk about in the blog post below.
The Long Process of Writing an Academic Article (Good Book Blog)
Biola’s podcast Think Biblically, led by Scott Rae and Sean McDowell, invited me onto the podcast to talk about the imprecatory psalms that involve calling down curses on our enemies.
Curse Our Enemies (Think Biblically Podcast)
The order of books in the Old Testament appears to most Christians to be set, but early manuscripts have many different orders. In this blog post I addressed the the different positions of Ruth in the canon and looked at how the three different positions for the book of Ruth influence how we read the book.
Where is Ruth? (Good Book Blog)