In some recent comments on a post about the salvation of “all Israel” Alfred encouraged me to look at the argument of Jason Staples that the “fulness of the nations” (Rom. 11:25) is a reference to the northern kingdom of Israel or Ephraim, and that the salvation of “all Israel” must consist in the… ( | 7 comments)
I have been working through Brant Pitre’s rather too methodical and, in my view, tendentious (I know, the pot calling the kettle black) Jesus and Divine Christology, in which he makes a case for reading divine identity into certain of the words and deeds of Jesus.Pitre is interested in… ()
It is Brant Pitre’s argument in Jesus and Divine Christology that the intrinsic divinity of Jesus is revealed in the Gospels either through actions and events or through certain cryptic sayings. His divinity is a secret, a hidden reality, that may sometimes be glimpsed breaking through… ( | 3 comments)
The third “epiphany miracle,” after the two sea miracles, is the transfiguration or “metamorphoses” (metemorphēthē) of Jesus in the presence of Peter, James, and John, on the mountain.1. Pitre begins by noting the important parallel between the account of Jesus’ transfiguration or… ()
The second “epiphany miracle” discussed by Brant Pitre in his book Jesus and Divine Christology is Jesus walking on the water (Matt. 14:22-33; Mk. 6:45-52; Jn. 6:16-21).The disciples are making slow progress across the Sea of Galilee against a strong headwind. In the early morning,… ( | 3 comments)
Chapter two of Jesus and Divine Christology is about the “epiphany miracles.” Brant Pitre states the main purpose of the chapter quite bluntly: it is to “demolish the modern scholarly myth… that Jesus is not depicted as divine in the Synoptic Gospels” (40).There are three such… ()
I have just started reading Brant Pitre’s Jesus and Divine Christology (2024), in which he sets out to show that the earliest Jewish followers of Jesus believed he was divine because “Jesus himself spoke and acted as if he were divine during his lifetime”—only he did so in a very Jewish… ( | 5 comments)
I have been reading Tom Wright’s Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive Into Paul’s Greatest Letter (2023), wondering whether I should make it recommended reading for a course on Romans. I probably will but with caveats.My view is that Wright’s assessment of the traditional Protestant… ()
Nothing much to see here, just a footnote to my argument about Jesus being “in the form of a god,” but some people may find it interesting.The opening clause of the famous encomium celebrating the strange career of Jesus in Philippians 2:6-11 is usually translated “being in the form of God.” This… ()
The idea of the “eschatological pilgrimage of the gentiles” to a rebuilt temple and restored Zion is well attested in Isaiah especially but is found in other Old Testament and Hellenistic-Jewish writings. Here are three examples, but we could add Isaiah 56:6-7; 66:18-20; Zech. 14:16; Mic. 4:1-2;… ( | 2 comments)
When Paul says, “if you call yourself a Jew” (Rom. 2:17), the traditional understanding has been that this is addressed to a Jew whom he is about to charge with hypocrisy: “You call yourself a Jew but you do this, that, and the other! Shame on you!”It is sometimes argued, however, in keeping with… ()
In their “manifesto for theological interpretation,” Craig Bartholomew and Heath Thomas assert the priority of theological interpretation over historical-critical interpretation.1 History must be understood theologically as the arena in which the painful and hopeful redemptive narrative of the… ()
I have finally got round to reading John Barclay’s highly esteemed Paul and the Gift, and he almost persuaded me to change my mind about the identity of the Gentiles who do not have the Law but do what the law requires (Rom. 2:14).I have been going backwards and forwards over the last few… ()
I have been working through Craig Keener’s Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost (2016) to prepare some teaching materials on Pentecostal hermeneutics. It’s a fairly casual read, so far at least. I could really do with something a bit more technical. But it’s a good… ()
I did a couple of podcast episodes recently with David Capes for The Stone Chapel Podcasts, talking about my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul.
Episode 140 “In the Form of A God” with Andrew Perriman, Part 1
Episode 141 “In The Form of A God”… ()
It is easy to visualise the traditional interpretation of Philippians 2:6-11 as a downward parabola or u-bend: Christ existed in heaven from eternity “in the form of God”; he descended into the world, becoming man and dying on the cross; then he is raised from the dead and restored to his position… ( | 13 comments)
This is a dull, and frankly unnecessary, technical note on the genitive construction with a preposition en morphēi theou (ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ) in Philippians 2:6. I’ve had to look at this a bit more closely following a rather disjointed conversation with someone on Twitter who had different… ( | 12 comments)
John Baumberger has a question about my translation of en morphē theou in Philippians 2:6 as “in the form of a god.” He takes issue with the indefinite construction on a couple of grounds:1. The word theos ‘without the definite article almost always refers to God himself (and not… ( | 10 comments)
The famous passage about Christ in Philippians 2:6-11 is usually described as a “hymn,” and is usually taken to celebrate the inverted parabola of Christ’s descent from heaven, his incarnation as man, the nadir of his death on the cross, followed by his return to heaven and exaltation to a position… ( | 15 comments)
A couple of days after my Transfigured interview, Sam Tideman recorded a conversation with Mike Bird about his book Jesus among the gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World. Mike does a really good job of painting in the neglected pagan religious background to the evolution of… ( | 1 comment)
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