Fear – Deuteronomy, Part 1

Then we left Horeb, Moses said, and passed through all that immense, forbidding (yârêʼ, והנורא) wilderness that you saw on the way to the Amorite hill country as the Lord our God had commanded us to do, finally arriving at Kadesh Barnea.[1]  The word forbidding gives...

Romans, Part 83

But we who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not just please ourselves.[1]  I assume that the weak (ἀδυνάτων, a form of ἀδύνατος) referred back to the one who is weak in the faith (ἀσθενοῦντα [a form of ἀσθενέω] τῇ πίστει).  The weak person...

Sexual Immorality Revisited, Part 2

The exercise of revisiting Paul’s Religious Mind and the meaning of Sexual Immorality has clarified a few things that were right in front of me all along.  I considered again the list of sins that described the former lives of some who were called to faith in Corinth:...

Sirach: Pro and Con

What follows are pro and con comments from two websites.  I set the texts side by side in Greek and English translation for comparison/contrast and offer them here without comment. “There are a number of references to the book of Sirach in the New Testament.  James...

Sexual Immorality Revisited, Part 1

I want to look more closely at Kyle Harper’s article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature, “Porneia—The Making of a Christian Sexual Norm.”  He cited two sources to support the expansion of the meaning of πορνεία during the intertestamental period: Sirach...