Old Testament

If I could give every new pastor a gift in their first year of preaching, I’d give them a friend like Jessica Jacobs.

In the life of early Israel, Gottwald found a God of economic justice.

Brent Strawn aims to debunk mistruths that come from biblical illiteracy and anti-Semitism.

Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler show how multiple traditions arise when different people read the same text.

Yes, there’s violence. But there’s also God’s faithfulness and care.

Hans Boersma sees scripture as more open to imaginative reading than our modern methods permit. The key is faith in Christ.

The lines between sacred history and contemporary life are wonderfully, miraculously blurred.

If it wasn’t for courageous women that dared to see beyond the lies.

The history of Palestinian Christian interpretation of the Old Testament reminds us of the nuanced, fragile nature of life in that region.

In two pages, you go from a simple devotional habit to being sucked into the vortex of global power plays. You must be reading Brueggemann.

I've been enjoying CCblogger Rachel Hackenberg's Lenten sermon series posts. She offers several, separate ideas: on the question "Who do you say that I am?" (following the Narrative Lectionary's readings from John), on prayer practices, on "Lift High the Cross," on the paintings of Anneke Kaai.

But my favorite is Hackenberg's series on the Revised Common Lectionary's Old Testament readings.

President Obama’s speech in Newtown on December 17 included this pivotal question: “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” The president is bristling here at the way our political discourse reflexively leaps to claims about individual rights and freedoms.

My church's adult Sunday school class ended up doing a six-week study of one of John Ortberg’s inspirational and easy-to-read books. A member of the class loved the book and wanted to share and teach it—and who can argue with six weeks off as a teacher?

Before that, we’d been through many of N.T. Wright’s “For Everyone” study guides, and we'd organized a successful unit on Islam and Christianity, taught well by an instructor from our county college. We’ve read Adam Hamilton; we've added online conversation to our Lenten study. Now what?

Kathleen O'Connor's daringly imaginative rereading of Jeremiah reveals a community experiencing the classic accents of trauma.