5 Minute Bible

Another Biblical Studies podcast series

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:19:07 PDT

It's been a long time since I prepared a 5 Minute Bible podcast, lots of reasons, hopefully the drought will break in the next month or three as life quietens again. In the meanwhile I'll do two things. Recommend Mark Goodacre's NT podcast series, he's on number 3 now, and the one I've listened to is really good! The three podcasts so far are:

The other thing I'll do which should help remind me of some of the topics I said I'd address here ;) and so perhaps get me started again sooner :) is to repeat some of the older 'casts. The first repeat will be the next post "above".

Bible study in mother tongues

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:38:12 PDT

Here's my idea for helping people make Bible study resources available in their mother tongues - and (of course) they are audio Bible study resources!

Bonhoeffer on Gen 3 - Conscience

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:45:52 PDT

Bonhoeffer has some hugely stimulating ideas in his discussion of the "fall" story in Genesis 3. Probably none are more stimulating, or easy to fail to grasp as his thought about "conscience" - at least difficult for people for whom the idea that conscience is the "voice of God within" is deeply embedded, since Bonhoeffer almost reverses that idea, noticing that it is conscience that drives the first humans away from God!

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An Introduction to Gapping

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:19:59 PDT

Gapping, where hearers have to "fill in" information that is missing in the text, is a really significant part of biblical story-telling. So, I'll need to introduce the idea to next year's Biblical Narrative class. Normally we "gap" unconsciously, and not just when reading narratives as I hope I'll show you in this podcast. We'll also begin to think about what makes gapping more - or less - legitimate. (See 2 Corinthians 11)

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Amos 7:14 presuppositions and rhetoric

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:18:37 PDT

Amos 7:14 is a striking problem for interpreters, not least because what Amos is reported as saying to Amaziah seems to contradict what he is reported to be doing in the rest of the book. This makes it fertile ground for us to incorporate either our presuppositions or rhetoric into the text.

(I use the NIV and Grasping God's Word) as examples in this but do not intend disrespect for the translators or authors, just to suggest they are human too!
Duvall, J. Scott, and J. Daniel Hays. Grasping God's Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible. 2nd ed. Zondervan, 2005 is an excellent book, which we plan to use as a textbook for a course I'll teach next year :)

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Self-referentiality and openness in online biblical studies

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:15:22 PDT

Having just posted about the (no longer MIA) Biblical Studies Carnival ל׳ I then find myself double tagged for the 11111: The Binary Biblical Studies Carnival Meme which is far too many numbers and indeed writing systems for numbers for my poor little head :( I say double tagged, since my first and real tagger Biblical Studies and Technological Tools actually tagged me on 5 Minute Bible, but I just don't have time to organise a 5 or even 4 minute podcast with cynical or entertaining post titles for other, so far untagged biblical studies bloggers, and anyway, this meme was started to make up for the "missing" carnival, or at least so David the 'pottamus Kerr claimed. So, I've found a very mathematical way out...

I hereby tag myself with the post: Self-referentiality and openness in online biblical studies.

God the exegete: 2 Sam 7: Part One

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:35:10 PDT

This is the first part of a short series (it might only be two parts, who knows ;) on passages where God exegetes his own words.

In this part we'll look at 2 Samuel 7, where David wants to build a 'house' = temple for God, since he already has a nice 'house' = palace for himself ('house of cedar' means a palace with expensive wood panelling). I'll look at how God gives a four word speech and then explains in detail what it means. And in the process starts the punning and wordplay that lead to the superb promise to David, later in the chapter.

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Bibleref but no markup

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:19:17 PDT

For more than a decade I've wanted an easy way to make Bible references like these: Amos 9:7; Ruth 4:7 link to the Bible or to popup the verses cited, I put a lot of work into doing that for the Amos commentary.

Now, thanks to the nice folk at Logos, who I expect will benefit from their kindness through lots of links ;-) I have been able to add this facility to this blog, and to my others,. It automatically takes most Bible references I type and uses Sean's clever Bibleref system to add the verse as a popup, and make the reference a link to the passage. My only two disappointments are

that apparently it does this without rewriting the source code for the page, so probably Google etc. will not be able to use this semantic markup :( maybe in a later implementation?
and that somehow though I asked for the version to be TNIV it shows up as New Living... maybe this is a temporary glitch, rather than a sign from heaven as to which really is the New Inspired Version to follow the NIV which followed the AV.

The Perspicuity of Scripture (i)

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:39:56 PDT

My tradition (the Baptist part of the Nonconformist or radical Reformation) has stressed the idea that Scripture is perspicuous, that the Bible is easy to understand, and that anyone can understand it - or at least grasp its essentials - without special training or equipment. Yet there are for sure some difficult passages. There are also passages that seem to flat out contradict other parts of the Bible. How can you call a book like that "perspicuous"?

In this post I'll argue that one key mistake we make is to think of the Bible as if all its parts were also "Bible", they aren't they are merely fragments!

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Some other posts dealing with related topics include:

Or you could explore the menu on the right...

Working with what the Bible doesn't say

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:38:03 PST

In this post I'll start looking at how we respond to the Bible's silences, often there are questions we want to ask the Bible, which the Bible does not answer. What do we do then? Some of these questions, like the one I start with produce classic biblical puzzlers...

By the way, if the sound quality is not as good as usual, or if you hear building work or children playing in the background, that's because I recorded this post in the middle of a refugee camp! See another blog for more information.

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Twisted tales: or should the book of Judges be censored?

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:01:19 PST

Judges is definitely not suitable for Sunday School reading, the bits that are told are firmly censored, and few of us go back to notice what we are missing. But, if we do, what we find is a book chock full of horrid twisted tales, brutal, brutish and sadly not short. Why? Can such a nasty collection of stories be justified, or should it simply be banned?

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Text, canon, and the woman caught in adultery

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:16:50 PST

The pericope in John 7:53-8:11 is a fascinating test case in the interaction of text criticism and canon. Both the history of canon, and textual criticism seem dull and unexciting. Yet here they combine into a detective story or a theological conundrum that contributes to making the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy conflict with most Christian preachers' practice! In this post I won't address the detective story. But I will discuss this passage as a hint that we need a supple and flexible view of Scripture to deal "properly" with this passage.

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Note 1. The word "pericope" is transliterated from Greek, it is used in theology and biblical studies to refer to a traditional textual unit, especially one used as a unit in church or synagogue. By extension it is sometimes used as a fancy way of saying "textual unit". Here it would appear that our text was such a traditional unit in the early period, but by the time the chapter divisions were made the first verse had been attached to the "previous" unit. [_RETURN]

Note 2. For the detective story approach see e.g. A. Watson, “Jesus and the Adulteress” in Biblica 80 (1999): 100-108 [_RETURN]

Cliché Theology: Joshua 11:1-9

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:59:05 PST

Sometimes a good old-fashioned cliché is the best way to achieve your desired effect, and communicate your theological message. I'll illustrate this using Joshua 11:1-9. The story of how Jabin of Hazor and all his allied kings were defeated by Joshua and Israel. (With some help from their friend!)

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Ezra and the foreign wives

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:46:22 PST

At the end of the book of Ezra there a horrid account of Ezra and the "officials" gang up to force Judeans who have married foreign women to divorce them and send away them and their children. What do we do with passages like this? And as part of our thinking on this, where DO our values come from? If they don't come from the Bible, then do we have to use values established elsewhere to "judge" Scripture? Many people today do just that. But I'm a Baptist, Scripture is my final authority in matters of faith and practice, or is it?

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What is the Bible? (Part 2) a hologram?

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:15:28 PDT

Many people think the Bible is like a hologram, any part of which shows the truth. The practice of scholars, preachers and teachers, of citing single verses or lists of verses to demonstrate something, encourages this view. The claim that the Bible is "inerrant" in all its parts seems to seal the idea. Yet in the Bible God itself told us in the Bible that it is false!

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Obadiah and Jonah

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:36:07 PDT

Juxtaposition: putting things together to make something "more than the sum of the parts" is a common artistic skill, it is common (but often unrecognised) in the Bible. As my least favourite book of the Bible helps reveal!

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Complaint Psalms: Part Two

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:51:25 PDT

This second look at the complaint psalms continues to focus on Psalm 22. Part three will return to Jeremiah...

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Humour elsewhere

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:40:40 PDT

For those of you feeling deprived of no new episodes added to the humour in the Bible series, while you are waiting, you can head over to two posts of Lingamish's which elicited quite an array of candidates. First was Whoa to you who laugh and then incorrigibly followed by Funny Stuff in the Bible a short post with a long tail!

Complaint Psalms: Part One

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:22:00 PDT

This post starts to talk about Psalm 22, mentioning Job 10 on the way, we will examine these passages as a way into understanding "complaint psalms". Complaints are the commonest type of psalm in the book of psalms. You might like to listen to my earlier post "Arguing with God: Jer 12:1-4" first, it sets the scene for this one, and should probably have been called "Complaint psalms: Part One"!

I hope the next post - in a few days - will follow up looking some more at Psalm 22.

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Jonah 1:3-5 : What's Jonah doing?!

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:49:01 PDT

The puzzle of Jonah's actions, and other strange goings-on don't stop in Jonah 1:3, but deepen (pun intended) as we begin to read on... we meet the ship that had plans of its own and hear echoes of Santa Claus in the telling of Jonah's story...

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Jonah 1:2: three little words

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 11:47:12 PST

Continuing the series on Jonah, we rush ahead into the second verse of the book, only to spot yet again possibly more than one meaning. Jonah's task however is clear.

By the way I am sorry about the long delays recently, I hope to post more regularly again, but not till after enjoying a two week holiday - starting on Sunday.

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Isaiah 40 in Babylon

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:52:55 PDT

It is certainly one of my favourite Bible passages, indeed it is many people's favourite Bible chapter. Isaiah 40 is just full of superb phrases and pictures. Whenever it was composed, this chapter really comes to life and sparkles when it is heard as the Judean exiles in Babylon heard, it just before Cyrus the Persian king captured the city. For a better idea of the background watch the Video "Babylon as background to hearing Isaiah 40" (4MB).

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Matthew 5:17ff. and reading the Old Testament

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 20:09:27 PDT

More than 5 minutes, so not a podcast for here, but if you want to listen to something longer (like 30 mins plus question time) I've posted this morning's sermon to my blog: Matthew 5:17ff. : How to Read the Old Testament. Taking the "difficult" passage from the sermon on the mount and asking what does it mean to say that Jesus "fulfils" the Old Testament.

Sexual humour in Esther

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 17:11:40 PDT

The book of Esther tells a terrible story, of attempted genocide averted. Too often Christian readers miss the humour in the story, of course some of it is sex related, and/or poking fun at gender expectations, so perhaps there are reasons for the blindness.

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Babel 2: Gen 11 a straight up and down story

tim@carey.ac.nz (Dr Tim Bulkeley) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 14:06:35 PDT

This podcast takes a second look at Babel, with a focus on the structure of the story, and its themes. It includes "homework" for which you should ideally have a photocopy of Genesis 11:1-9 (preferably in a fairly literal translation like NRSV, RSV, TNIV, NIV, ESV...) and some coloured markers or crayons.

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