I wanted to post this before year's end, but things didn't work out. I plan to append this post to the eschatology archived threads. Came across three articles that (again) point out certain aspects of eschatology that all-too-often assumed rather than thoughtfully...
journal articles
Bad Day for Vatican Conspiracists: 80,000 Manuscripts to Be Digitized
Just when you were almost convinced that the Vatican wasn't asleep at the switch in its herculean effort to keep its ancient manuscripts secret. Bummer. You can read about the initiative here. Oh, wait . . . I'll bet that all these years they've been busy pulling...
Mike at Grace Church Bellingham: Thinking Like an Israelite: Week 1: Impurity and Sin
In the event that our livestream works for tonight's talk, I thought I'd post my slides as a PDF file for any who want to watch the stream. Even if the stream doesn't work, you still have the slides: Wk1-Impurity and Sin-2 Here is the video for Week 1:
The Biblical Prohibition of Intermarriage
I came across the article below today. It's on a site for an old journal -- all the issues are freely accessible. Here's the article, but check out the site! Cohen From the Bible to the Talmud-The Prohibition of Intermarriage Note: The Old Testament does not prohibit...
PanBabylonianism: The Wellspring of Middle Earth PaleoBabble
I came across this essay recently. It's from the out of print book, Mesopotamian and the Bible, edited by Mark Chavalas and Lawson Younger. The essay is by Chavalas, a scholar of biblical studies and ancient Mesopotamia: Chavalas Assyriology and Biblical Studies...
Kenneth Kitchen’s Ancient Orient and Old Testament Available as Free PDF
This book is an important, though slightly dated, contribution to understanding the OT in its ancient Near Eastern context. It is also quite useful for addressing a range of attacks on the integrity of the OT. Prof. Kitchen was for many years an Egyptologist in the...
What is the Meaning of BAPTIZEIN?
Follow the link below to what, in my experience, is the most lengthy scholarly treatment of the relevant primary sources for the meaning of baptizein ("baptize") available. The article just appeared online for free, though it was published in 2011: Eckhard Schnabel,...
Mike Heiser’s ETS Paper: The Divine Council in the Pentateuch
A week ago I presented this invited paper in the ETS Pentateuch section: ets-2016-divine-council-in-the-pentateuch The paper isn't an academic work per se. It's more conversational. I took that route because of the time limitation. However, it does have some different...
Three New Items by Mike for Amazon Kindle
I've begun to move some of my academic papers to Kindle format. To this point, I've been selling them as PDF files. I'm going to phase those out and move what I can (by publishing permission) to Kindle. If you go to this link on the Kindle store, you'll see the three...
Elongated Skulls and Christian Ethics
Those of you with an interest in the elongated skull paleobabble (that they have something to do with aliens or nephilim) will find this short essay of interest. It's from the Hot Cup of Joe blog. It's basically an overview of the methodological problems of the...
The Genealogies of Genesis 5, Mathematical Approaches, and Theological Messaging
Below is the best essay to date I've found on this fascinating topic: Lloyd Bailey, "Biblical Math as Heilgeschichte?" in Richard D. Weis and David M. Carr, eds., A Gift of God in Due Season: Essays on Scripture and Community in Honor of James A. Sanders (vol. 225;...
The Mysterious Book of Jasher
That's the title of this scholarly article by rabbi Arthur Chiel I recently found in an old issue of the journal Judaism: Chiel-The-Mysterious-Book-of-Jasher The article is a very good survey of the history of what some folks (even today) tout as a lost biblical book....
Naked Bible 53: Q&A 3
Our third Question and Answer episode! Here are the papers referenced in the show:REMNANT-DOTPROPHRESTORATION OF ISRAEL, Remnant-DPL Transcript 53 Q&A 3 Timestamps & Questions — Naked Bible Podcast Episode 53: Q&A 3 Timestamp Question 00:00–01:40 Intro...
The Cosmos in the Antikythera Mechanism: ET Flunked Astronomy
That's the title of a new, freely accessible scholarly paper on the Antikythera mechanism you can find here. Here's the abstract: The Antikythera Mechanism is a fragmentarily preserved Hellenistic astronomical machine with bronze gearwheels, made about the second...
Abba Doesn’t Mean ‘Daddy’
Earlier today I saw something come up in my Twitter account that I appreciated. It was a tweet from New Testament professor Will Varner. The link Will provided led me to this online post at the Gospel Coalition site: "Does Abba Mean 'Daddy'?" The brief post outlines...