This article surveys trends in Chronicles scholarship from 1994 to 2007. Most of the trends established by 1993 have continued with more depth and focus, although with a few challenges. These trends include: refining the distinctions between Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemia as coming from separate authors/editors; recognizing the integral role of the genealogies; and examining the literary artistry of the Chronicler. Newer trends include: pursuing the interplay between orality, on the one hand, and textuality and literacy, on the other; and bringing insights from an increasing sociological understanding of the Persian and Hellenistic periods in general. Recent years have also seen a wealth of new commentaries.
This article is a reflective review of Simon Gathercole’s book, Defending Substitution, in which he defended the position that Paul held a substitutionary position of atonement. That position contends that Jesus died ‘instead of sinners’, replacing them in his death. I primarily offer an exegetical critique based on an Old Testament understanding of Paul’s language, in which I do not find a mechanism of substitution. That critique is followed by some reflections on why I find Gathercole’s substitutionary view to fall short of the portrayal of God’s offers of grace and atonement that are found in the OT and picked up on by the New Testament writers as they use the OT language.
The repeated Old Testament injunction that God ‘visits the guilt of the fathers on the sons’ raises difficulties for the modern reader who might question the justice or morality of such divine behaviour. This paper explores: the injunction within its various literary, sociological, historical and theological contexts; how this injunction is applied internally in the Old Testament; and how it differs from the realm of the criminal justice system and the theme of individual responsibility. As result, one learns that this phrase, in its full expression, uses figurative and formulaic language from the legal context of covenant. It belongs to an expression that emphasizes the lasting mercy of God, while still communicating the serious collective consequences of breaking covenant.
While drawing on much common knowledge in biblical studies, this article distinctively first explains how the popular final-judgment position of eternal torment mistakenly arises from four factors: 1) not weighting the type of biblical literature from which doctrine is being drawn, 2) forgetting the NT concept of awaiting a general resurrection of the dead prior to final judgment, 3) not recognizing the biblical anthropology that presents humans holistically as mortals, and 4) wrongly conflating terms and symbols of different states of judgment (e.g. pre-resurrection vs. post-resurrection, and Gehenna vs. Hades) into an umbrella concept of ‘hell’. Second, this paper clarifies some frequently misunderstood ‘final judgment’ texts while demonstrating a commonsense method of biblical interpretation that draws on the cultural symbols of the first-century setting. The results lead to the better conclusion that in the final judgment those who are alienated from God suffer the ‘second death’ of destruction.
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