Here is a disappointing post to celebrate a disappointing Christmas—just a dreary list of previous Christmas posts. Something might pique your interest. I had neither the time nor the imagination to come up with a new piece. It’s even too cloudy and miserable here to get a sighting of the star of Bethlehem, which is a shame because it won’t happen again for 400 years. But it’s a good time to be writing a journal article on the relation between human sin and a creation subjected to one form of futility or another.

In our age of intense ecological anxiety, Paul’s sympathetic portrayal of creation as a suffering thing, yearning for liberation from its bondage to corruption (Rom. 8:19-22) has an obvious appeal. It’s a remarkable image, but how much modern theological weight can it bear? Can it support the sort of heavy-duty prophetic response that I think is needed to undergird the mission of the church in the western context, if not globally, as we enter the Anthropocene?

Jon Hallewell asks whether I have a list of scriptures that point to the first, second, and final horizons of New Testament eschatology. I do now.

The diagram illustrates the three horizons model. I think that the narrative-historical method obliges us to read the New Testament on the assumption that two historically realistic horizons and one transcendent horizon are in view.

The SBL annual meeting is happening online this year, of course. In a highly stimulating and persuasive presentation yesterday David Burnett argued for revisiting the thesis of D.A.S. Ravens that Luke uses the story of the anointing of Jesus by a woman to portray him as the messenger of Isaiah 52:7, who brings good news to Zion.

I didn’t get all the details, but enough, I think, to reconstruct the gist of the argument. Most of the substance, I presume, is from Ravens’ article, which I haven’t read yet, but Burnett added some excellent observations of his own, and I may have inadvertently slipped something of my perspective in.

This is really just an appendix to the previous post on the two “ends” in Jesus’ apocalyptic discourse in Mark 13. I have summarised the development of thought, highlighting what seem to me to be the salient literary features, with a few brief observations at the end. The awkward translations are mine.