There are a number of passages in the prophets, and especially in Jeremiah that are like the complaint (lament) psalms. In Jeremiah the passages known as “the confessions of Jeremiah” are particularly interesting. Here I’ll just look at one feature of the first two (or three, it depends how we count them of these passages …

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

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 …

No one has get suggested humour in Leviticus, so I’m moving on while I think… Numbers 11 provides a fun story with several wry smiles, and Moses tells God that as Israel’s mother (which role Moses himself is not at all keen on) Yahweh should feed and care for these “babies&#…

Second city in Ancient Judah, we know of it’s siege and capture by the Assyrians from the Bible and from Assyrian written sources and pictures. We also know something of its later capture by Babylon in the time of Jeremiah…

There is an error common to many Atheists and Christians, though they believe their ideas are quite different. The mistake is easily made the words God and god look almost alike. So it seems obvious that “God” is a “god”. Few things sensible people believe could be further from the truth. &nbsp…

The flat out contradictions in Scripture make Bible readers jumpy.Conservatives seek to defend the “integrity” of Scripture by denying that there is any (even the slightest) disagreement, those on the other side delight in the “proof” that the Bible is merely a collection of venerable ancient texts of no relevance today. Both responses are dead …

The final podcast in a series written as guest posts for Sacraparental that express the key ideas of Not Only a Father briefly and simply. This one explores a few ways to experience God as motherly. Looks at Psalm 131 and Jesus teaching in Matthew 5 & 6 as well as Numbers 11. For more …

Can a currently unspeakable picture of God, which was in use for the first 1400 years of Christianity help us enrich our relationship with God? Many of the best known theologians and writing pastors of the first 1400 years of the Christian church (including Clement, Jerome, Augustine and Anselm) were happy to speak in different …

What does it mean for Christian talk of God as motherly that Jesus called (even maybe named) God as -father-? Then we take a closer look at what Jesus meant when he talked about God as father. Finally I’ll think about what it means for this topic that Jesus was male. There is a lot …

Real estate agents understand the importance of location This video explains the significance of the location of the “Promised Land”.  It describes the different regions briefly. I’ve wondered about extending this series with some focused on different areas… What do you think…

I never said all the humour in the Bible was gentle or polite. We have come to expect harsh even toilet humour from the prophets, but in this reading Leviticus outdoes Ezekiel sharpening his toilet humour and even making it shorter and more pointed. In this podcast I’ll compare Ezek 6:3-6 with Lev 26:30, and …

This is the passage that makes sense of Gen 2, and of human life. Our world and our lives are broken and spoiled because of sin. Sin is not breaking rules, it is breaking relationship with the maker by wanting to assume the power ourselves. The reading of Genesis 3 is here. There is another …

Introducing Genesis 1 & 2, with their radical message. Reading them to answer HOW questions is misreading! They intend to answer more important WHY questions. It began a podcast series on the Essential 100 Bible Readings, the Bible readings themselves are available as audio (MP3) files here. (I also dealt with Genesis 1 in a …

As the first book in the Bible Genesis has a special importance for readers. This very brief introduction to some of the literary and theological issues of the book is really just the very beginning of studying Genesis! I’ve been working on a Bible Dictionary article on “Genesis” , so it seemed like a good …

We often notice that the Bible talks about God as -father- (though this picture is rarer than we think), how come we don’t notice it also speaks of God in motherly ways…

Thalia invited me to do a series of (by my standards) longish posts over at Sacraparental. They introduce briefly some of the key ideas from my book Not Only a Father. The first has just appeared: What’s Wrong with this Picture? This is a podcast of that material. Talking in pictures is necessary when we …

The story of the “Golden Calf” episode, offers three different answers to the question: Who brought Israel out of Egypt. And they are attributed to different people and recounted to us by different people! This opens lots of interesting possibilities for interplay of points of view. When there are “rough edges” like this in a …

In part two we get drawn to the hymn in Phil 2 and discover not only what Jesus’ discension is all about, but also get to understand the talk of us being gifts in Eph 4:11-13 better. (If you have not listened to part 1 do listen to that first.) The original audio only version …

In this podcast we’ll begin to grapple with a complicated idea, but quite simply begin to discover how to become (more) ideal readers. We’ll be looking at Eph 4 , and you will also need a bookmark in Ps 68 . This is a podcast in two parts (otherwise I’d have to change the name …

In this post we’ll discover some humour from below. The humour of the oppressed often pokes fun at the oppressor. Those who subjugate others fear them, and this fear generates feelings of inferiority that in Exodus some oppressed women manipulate delightfully. Please open your Bibles at Exodus 1-2. The original audio only version of this …

In a post Why the Bible is just not (so) funny David returned to a theme he’s argued before, that the Bible is not funny. Aparently back in 2007 he issued a challenge that readers of his blog could not give examples of humour from every book in the Bible: Funny Stuff in the Bible. …

Francesca Stavrakopoulou closed her article “Why the BBC’s new face of religion believes God had a WIFE” saying: I can’t help but wonder what the world would be like had the goddess remained. Let’s explore the evidence and try to answer her speculation. This evidence comes mainly from surrounding peoples, though the Bible has some …

This is the video version of a post whose original audio only version is here. It was stimulated by an article in The Daily Mail (a UK tabloid newspaper) “Why the BBC’s new face of religion believes God had a WIFE” It caused a flurry among the Twittering classes, and on Facebook, and even among …

As a matter of fact Yahweh was married, yet the Bible cannot tolerate people who speak of God as male or masculine. This podcast seeks to explore this apparent contradiction as a first follow up to yesterday’s “Why do you read? Or: Was God married?” The original (audio only) version of this podcast was here…

It is about time I finished this casuistry thing (unless any of you know different), but first I think I should show that this approach to Scripture is not just a Matthew thing, but does indeed come from Jesus. We’ll look at a neat case from Mark …

Here’s the third (I hope gripping) installment of this series on why the distinction between casuistic and apodictic matters beyond the form criticism of the legal corpora of the Pentateuch Apart from that one (corpora) no new “long words” this time, and that one is NOT in the podcast — with Gospel of Matthew and …

This is the video version of the second part of this three part series. (Part one, explained the difference between the two sorts of law.) Here I claim that the distinction helps us make sense of Jesus seemingly contradictory teaching about Old Testament law. I was a bit careless in narrating this one, note that …

Here’s a video version of a podcast I did a while back, about one of the most dull-sounding topics in biblical studies Yet distinguishing these two (whether or not you remember the names) is vital to understanding the New Testament! Tomorrow I’ll explain why…

Here’s the video version of this podcast (the audio only version is here). It offers another approach to Ruth, this time borrowing from the Swiss scholar Crapon di Caprona and suggesting a reading of Ruth 2 that takes account of the cultural discrepancy implied in the text… what DO you think…

I’ve not addressed Hebrews before in the 5minuteBible podcasts, and it’s a book I learned to love through studying it while learning Greek… yet one that’s strangely (or not so strangely) unpopular today&#…

There are many ways in which the story-tellers of the Bible ensure that their tellings are lively and engaging. One is through the way they report speech. There is usually more “direct speech” (where the words of a character are “quoted”) then “indirect speech” (where the teller tells us the gist of what the character …

Often in biblical narrative things “just seem to happen”, rather like they do in our lives But are such “happenings” chance or divine providence at work? We’ll try to decide, using Gen 37:12ff. (read with Gen 39) and Ruth 2 as examples. &nbsp…

For the second part of this “A text without contexts is dumb” series we’ll think about cotext, the text that surrounds a text, providing context. The biblical examples come from Psalms and Ephesians. You might want to listen to Part 1 here first &nbsp…

What does it mean to “believe”? Can Alice in Wonderland help us avoid a common Evangelical error? And does “it’s in the Bible” end conversation about the “Canaanite genocide”?1 The scare quotes round Canaanite genocide indicate my question, still as far as I am concerned unanswered whether such an “event” occurred, or even was (fictionally?) …

The second in what is becoming a series on Jephthah’s story1  I examine the question my friend actually asked, which was whether or not we the people should find Jephthah guilty of killing his only child, an anonymous daughter. Here’s the case so far… I need to do another on “history” when I get back …

A friend on Facebook asked about her pastor’s interpretation of the story of Jephthah’s daughter, since that’s a “difficult” passage I thought it would make an interesting podcast. The trouble is I got waylaid, I spotted a distraction in the story.. Jephthah’s story (I have to return with another podcast about his daughter’s story!) may …

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 …

Obadiah’s not a comedy. It is nasty, brutish though thankfully short. It is harder than usual to talk about this book as Israeli defense forces continue to rain destruction on Gaza though perhaps the placing of the book of Obadiah and my trip (starting Wednesday) to what was till recently war-torn Sri Lanka provide glimpses …

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 …

Isaiah 40 besides being one of the pillars on which the book of Isaiah rests is magnificent. This podcast, trying to deal with the whole chapter can’t do it justice (for a bit more on the background try Isaiah 40 in Babylon) I may do some follow-up podcasts on the different parts. Anyway, this time you …

You cow! Is neither clever, nor funny, in today’s world. So why do I think Amos 4:1 was intended to be funny? Listen to find out There is a post with more detail on this verse on my blog here: The works referred to in this podcast were: King, Philip J. Amos, Hosea, Micah: An …

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 …

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 …

Isaiah 6 is a powerful account of Isaiah’s dramatic vision in the temple, a little background brings this power sharply into focus. This post deals with only the first few words of the great account of Isaiah’s temple vision in Chapter 6. Maybe I’ll do another to follow it, it’s certainly a powerful chapter…

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 …

Here’s what I would have said if they had asked me about the Bible! (Not 5 minutes but 6, but it is a big topic and here are the usual downloadable links &nbsp…

This is not a 5 minute Bible but part of an interview for a Shine TV series. I wish I’d had more chance to speak about the Bible, and more oportunity to focus on the positive. Maybe I do need to do a podcast&#…

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 …

Prophets and prophecy: the most misunderstood part of OT, “mysterious messengers”. A random chunk from a prophetic book will offer a confusing, seemingly muddled, confusion of vivid picture language. Yet, three simple principles can (usually) unlock the mystery and allow the prophets to speak: conversion not prediction context not timeless conversation not monologue As I’ll …

To complete my little trilogy of ‘casts I turn to suggest a richer approach to “kingship” in Samuel than the simple messianism my previous ‘cast suggested. With the help of Oscar Wilde’s poems: Libertatis Sacra Fames (text and comment), and Sonnet to Liberty I suggest we listen to both “majority view” and the “minority report” …

Following the Twisted Tales of the book of Judges (in the Hebrew Bible) comes Samuel. The opening of Samuel responds well to the questions posed by the horrid stories that ended Judges…

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 …

The first chapter of Isaiah (which perhaps runs on to 2:4, but you decide provides an introduction to this book in three parts, laying out the “big story” at the start…

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!…

This post is a follow-up to the previous one, addressing submission in 1 Peter 3. 1 Peter 3:1 calls wives to -submit- to their husbands. What does it call husbands to do? Do our common English translations mislead us? Was Peter more revolutionary than we thought? In addressing this question, as well as a look …

“Head” is often used as picture language. Because such language is always deeply cultural and even personal it is vital to think about what someone else means when they say head – unless it clearly is just the lump that keeps one’s neck from fraying. Paul’s usage is particularly interesting and has more to do …

The Sydney Anglicans are suggesting women might want to promise to -submit- to their husbands. I argue that they are not being biblical enough, and don’t go half far enough! I begin with Martyn Lloyd-Jones fine introduction to reading Ephesians 5 and suggest where half-hearted, partial readings go wrong. I’ll follow this up with a …

This post is not itself directly about the Bible, though it is thoroughly “biblical” as I’ll be happy to demonstrate if you ask targeted questions In the podcast I’ll take a pagan suggestion  from the Sidney Anglicans, and a scathing critique of the churches (from Stanley Hauerwas)1 and think more clearly about Marriage equality/the Redefinition …

Jeremy Thompson pointed out on Facebook the interesting verse in 1 Kings 20:18 where Ben-Hadad having had a bit too much too drink when Israel comes out for battle: Says: 18 “If they have come out for peace, take them alive; if they have come out for war, take them alive.” Which as far as …

Huffington Post article claiming the pais was the centurion’s sex partner produced a little flurry of posts and comment on the biblical blogs. Gavin at Otagosh in Jesus and the Centurion’s boy wrote: “I’m not sure the story actually has much value in terms of current debates on homosexuality.” Is that right? &nbsp…

“…the more I have read and studied Scripture over the decades the more I become aware that the writers were more often sharp-tongued trouble makers with a biting sense of humour than they were safe moralisers like the LXX translators The Ltalians have a saying: “Traduttore, traditore.” about how translators often betray their text.   …

Isaiah 1:2-31 forms a coherent unit and introduces the themes and “movements” of the book. It may help to either have your Bible open at the passage, or listen to this reading of the text first, as I refer to rather than read from the passage in the main podcast…

The superscription in Isaiah 1:1 is not the only one in the book, which may be suggestive of the book’s own history. It also announces the book’s focus on Jerusalem the Holy City…

Describes why careful readers of Isaiah have for a thousand years thought of the book in (at least) three different imperial contexts…

This podcast introduces the book (not the prophet) Isaiah. We’ll begin to think about how this huge (66 chapters) sprawling book is organised. This will lead into a more detailed look at many of the parts over the coming months. This introduction to the book assumes some understanding of how prophets and prophetic books work. …

Jonah is carefully and neatly structured into four acts (the chapters): Act one: Jon 1:1-16 Pagan sailors converted Scene one: Jonah’s commission 1:1-3 Scene two: On a ship in a storm Jon 1:4-16 Jon 1:17 (MT & LXX 2:1) bridge Act two: Jon 2:1-10 Jonah talks to God Scene three: in the belly of the …

Like soap-operas, and other serials, biblical narratives with several episodes often seek to bridge between two parts. These bridges are often verses that serve to link one episode to another. We’ll look at examples from Ruth, Jonah and Genesis 2-…

I’d like to sharpen this one. I am trying to explain and illustrate the second step of the five step process. Making reference mainly to Luke 9:1ff.. Any suggestions you have would be welcome…

Biblical narrative is seldom clumsy and not often more complicated than it needs to be. So apparent clumsiness is usually intended to show us something. As I hope to convince you it does in Jonah 1:10. &nbsp…

Marking is a great stimulus for ideas for these podcasts. I thought I do a short series telling how the five step process works using one of our “test” passages. This first one is just step one, I’ll do the others later&#…

With mothers’ day coming up it seems a good time to reissue an old post, with a new format and somewhat cleaned up audio. I briefly remind you of some of the passages that picture God as a midwife. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) regularly pictures Yahweh as intimately associated with forming in the womb …

After several false starts I believe I now have 5 minute Bible working on iTunes Please let me know if you have difficulty finding/getting it, I believe a search for “5 minute Bible” under “podcasts” will show it. I have also created a Facebook “page” for 5 minute Bible, please consider “liking” the page, at …

I’ve been marking student assignments for a course on Genesis. The more I mark the more I become aware of the issue of the intended (expected/implied) audience. In this podcast I’ll suggest that the answer is not as simple as it sounds and draw a conclusion about our practices of reading Scripture&#…

Like all good stories, and the Bible is before and after everything else a story, Scripture begins at the beginning. The beginning of everything, and a garden planted by God. Everything falls apart, for humans fall apart, and many of the stories in Scripture are horrible, grotesque or inspiring, for such a mixture describes the …

The Christian Bible is a big sprawling collection of documents from widely different time periods (roughly the end of the Bronze Age to the Roman empire) in many different genres (as different as history and love poems, or proverbs and lengthy letters) composed in three languages and two different writing systems. To make matters worse …

Since I am teaching Genesis again I am filling out the gaps in my podcasts on this book. I think it is important to notice that Genesis is told to us by (at least) two narrators. The story comes to us as an edited text, that is it already in its telling belongs, not to …

In this podcast I’ll again argue that Robert Carroll gets it wrong. Despite his own fierce black humour he fails to acknowledge its presence or at least its prevalence in the prophets. He writes about humour in Hosea in: Carroll, Robert P. ‘Is Humour among the Prophets’. On humour and the comic in the Hebrew …

One of the things I have not yet done as well as I’d like is to package these podcasts into convenient forms to give quick simple  introductions for students in classes I teach, so I’ve been collecting the posts on Genesis with that in mind. I’ll gradually be adding podcasts to fill some of the …

    In part one I drew attention to the problem that this verse seems to contradict what Paul himself approves and to some funny things going on in and around the verse. Here I’ll focus on my reason for mentioning this, how we should respond when a Bible passage seems to contradict what the …

Perhaps no Bible text illustrates the dangers of a simplistic reading of Scripture than 1 Cor 14:34. If we tear this verse from its cotext,1 and then read it as if the Bible were “God’s instruction manual for life” and even worse read it also literally then we are in trouble! The verse (in the …

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 …

How do we picture Scripture? That is what is/are the (unconscious) models in our heads as we read and use the Bible? This ‘cast refers particularly to Gen 18:20ff. and Amos 7. How did God reveal Scripture, by dictation as with Moses, by some less sharp inspiration as seems to have been the case for …

Like Esther, Daniel is set in a foreign court and telling to the trials and triumphs of exiled Judeans and is packed with humour at the expense of the imperial overlords. In this podcast I’m following an article by Hector Avalos from CBQ and focusing on the repeated lists of Dan 3. For his comparison …

Well,the end of the world has passed, again That’s the second time this year! It is the Bible that causes all the problems. or ratheit is bad reading of the Bible that causes all the problems. No book is more commonly misread than Revelation. Christians keep wanting it to predict tomorrow. And boy, do they …

In Understanding the prophets: Part one I spoke about the “Three Cons” as a key to reading the prophetic books of the Old Testament with understanding and in ways which are faithful to their original intention. In this second part we’ll look at an example from Amos 5:18ff. and apply this approach. The result will …

If podcasts can have dedications, then this one is dedicated to Robert Carroll. The podcast is full or irony, first that of an introvert who spoke before thinking and who failed to read or digest a fine work by an admired teacher and friend, and then that of a frequently (and often mordantly) humorous Irishman …

Gender is not (only) a Feminist issue! I ended my double post Proverbs as a gendered text and Proverbs as a gendered text: Proverbs 31:10ff. with the question of where reading such (strongly) male texts left women readers. Sadly it has had little response, (though thank you Judy So I’ll end this podcast with a …

Back to the longer series, just in case you thought I’d forgotten. Jeremiah has a harsh and cutting humour on almost every page. In this post we’ll look at Jer 2:26-28. And just so you don’t think I am inventing the humour I find there I’ll cite some proper scholarship.1 Here’s the audio: Humour in …

The poem in Prov 31:10ff. has been read in various ways, by men and by women, as an oppressive and as a liberating text. I will suggest two clues to making sense of the poem. The first is to read it in the context of the book of Proverbs (and not as an isolated poem), and …

While it is quite clear that Proverbs is a gendered text, the way it speaks of women is interesting. For a text coming from an ancient patriarchal society human women who serve as aspirational models are a surprise. No doubt any real Feminist would instantly switch into “pedestal” mode, but I think it’s worth pausing …

I am doing a three part series at South City Baptist Church on Sunday afternoons on Understanding the prophets. This week thinking, about what a prophet was and how they spoke, I used the title: “What does a prophet? What does it profit?” these are the slides from the talk. A key idea in this …

At last, I’m on the home straight, the first of the prophets The prophetic books are packed with humour. But right at the start we’ll need to get one thing clear. Humour is not just the comic, entertainment that promotes a giggle or a smile. There is humour also in tragedy, at times when “you …

If you ever want to provoke laughter in church in the 21st century, just read a chunk of the Song of Songs, of course it works better if you get a couple to read to each other! The imagery is just so strange to our culture that almost any passage will achieve laughter in moments. …

Never one reluctant to ask for more, David Ker has rightly pointed out that I did not explain how/why Ecclesiastes 10:5-15 is (and was meant to be) funny. So here goes…1 Oh, don’t worry, this won’t be a dull dissection or a boring breakdown, I’ll just show you how several of the signs of humour …

This series is just getting more and more interesting For Ecclesiastes I came across: Levine, Étan. “The Humor in Qohelet.” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 109, no. 1 (January 1997): 71-83. As well as all its other strengths Levine begins with a nice catalogue of the stupid scholars who have pompously declaimed the absence of …

There certainly should certainly be humour in Proverbs, after all the books says: A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength. (Proverbs 17:22) And sure enough when I went humour-hunting Google quickly fitted me up with Hershey H. Friedman, he used to be Bernard H. Stern Professor of Humor …

When looking for humour in Psalms, towards the end of the marking season, when teachers are always at a low ebb, I again cheated, asking Bob MacDonald (who has been studying the psalms closely for years now). I’ll repeat some of his general insights about the book, and then take up his suggestion about Psalm …

After some quite difficult books, suddenly a couple in a row that are easy. Job is full of humour, for all its dreadful topic and storyline, or perhaps because of them, almost every page sparkles with fun, or with sharp irony or more pointed sarcasm. The big question, of whether the book as a whole …

I have argued before that Esther is full of sexual and/or gendered humour, but that was before I took the topic of humour in the Bible (documents from very different cultural contexts from ours) seriously. Now however I have nine criteria to measure whether it is likely that authors intended the humour we find. These …

Nehemiah seems like a typical Sunday School story of a book, a sort of hero story made even less interesting by being told by the hero. Like Ezra it is not the first place I’d look searching for humour in Scripture. Yet, I think reading Nehemiah 6 we can trace more than one example of …

Ezra is far from the funniest book in the Bible, or the easiest read. Yet even here there are hints and traces of that most human of phenomena, humour. In Ezra 3:12-13 (as often) one either has to laugh or cry. Throughout the book something funny is going on with language and translation (see e.g. …

The strange, and strangely disturbing story of Micaiah ben Imlah in 2 Chronicles 18 which repeats very closely its source in 1 Kings 221 it ticks all the boxes as a passage intended to be funny. And when you read it, it is hilarious. From Jehoshaphat’s gentle resistance through Zedekiah with a “Viking” helmet, and …

The prayer of Jabez was wildly popular a few years back among voguish Christians worried about the lack of obvious and excess prosperity in their lives (compared to those richer and general better off than them, not compared to the world population in general). Even without that 1 Chron 4:9-10 is funny (strange peculiar, if …

Since Google suggests the first chapter of 2 Kings is humorous I’ll measure it against the criteria. It meets most (but not all) which i think makes it clear this passage is not merely funny but was intended to be funny. Though again it is a “black” humour. As a bonus I’ll offer a reading …

Idols, “gods” that people make! The very idea of making a god is one of those notions that almost have to reduce you to tears (whether of laughter or sadness and desperation depends on the circumstances), and the Bible has plenty of fun at the expense (in both senses) of idols. In this episode, therefore, …

The narrative books are on the whole easy targets for finding humour, so again I’ll recycle an old podcast This time in 2 Samuel 7 where God plays with words and puns away while explaining what he meant… So, here’s the link to the audio: God the Exegete…

For 1 Samuel I am going to cheat again, I just don’t think I can beat the hilarious introduction the first king, Saul, receives. In these two podcasts (again repeated)1  I’ll point up some of the fun in the tale of Saul and the donkeys So, here are links to the audio: Introducing Saul (1 …

Ruth is a lovely story, it’s humour is1 gentle and subtle. Part of the subtlety is that most (though not all) of the signs of humour are missing. However, I think we are intended to smile in at least two ways in the portrayal of the characters. For this entry in the humour series I …

I had to reinstall all the posts here from a backup. Now the little audio player that allowed you to play the files on the page (rather than downloading them) is broken. To do it another way means manually editing over 200 posts Can anyone help…

Usually I try to present the ideas in these podcasts so that anyone can understand. However, this time if you cannot read Scripture except in translation and you have not learned to use an interlinear or computer Bible to get beyond that handicap, this podcast may be less accessible. It deals with the naming of …

Judges is one Bible book where it has been common to recognise humour. Ehud killing the fat and oppressive king Eglon in the toilet has been a popular example, though  I’ll pretty much leave the scatology to David and others who appreciate it I’d rather focus on gender. In Judges relationships between men and women …

The little story, in Joshua 2, of Rahab and the clueless pair of young Israelite would be spies, provided Spenser1  (see Signs of humour: especially in written texts across cultures) with a nice example of several of his criteria all together in one text, making it evidently humorous. What do you think? Do the criteria
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David Ker, in one of the posts that stimulated this series, poses the serious and significant question: given the cultural gulf that separates us from the authors of Scripture how can we be sure something we see as funny tickled ancient Hebrew funny bones? Spotting humour is easier in speech than writing, and spotting humour
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Although all my talks on the E100 readings should be listed here (in roughly reverse  order) the listing here is much more convenient: E100 reflections on each reading…

In this podcast I’ll introduce the idea of the ending of John as a sphragis, and very briefly mention what that might mean for reading John’s gospel, but most of the time will be spent on the much less technical question of why I am convinced that Jesus rose from death and met with the
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This chapter gives what it tells us is an eyewitness account of a Roman execution. Jesus, who has done no real wrong, except offend the religious leaders, and worry the politicians is subjested to the casual brutality of an imperial production-line death. Such a death, of an innocent man, is shocking. But Jesus was not
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In this chapter, we get the climax of John’s series of sayings where Jesus echoes the divine “I am” cf. Exodus 3 (E100-17: Exodus 3-4: Getting the holy between your toes!), and we also notice how amid powerful people who seem muddled and out of control, Jesus (the one who seems to be the victim)
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Passover was the greatest pilgrimage festival for 1st century Jews, Jerusalem was packed with people (like for a world cup – only more crowded celebrating the great liberation from foreign oppression that God worked for Moses and the ancestors in Exodus. No wonder the Romans were jumpy, no wonder the Sadducees on the Sanhedrin (Jewish [...]…

Since (at least Western) Christians this week leading to the celebration of the resurrection on Easter Day by first remembering the events of the days leading up to Jesus’ death, and remember his crucifixion on Friday, I will not be podcasting any of my “Humour in the Bible” series this week. Rather I will repeat [...]…

Gospels are not biographies, nor are they just collections of sayings, they focus on Jesus’ death and resurrection. Without either event can’t understand Jesus or the gospel. But we also to see and understand that Jesus is God incarnate and that Jesus is risen else his dearth and the disciples turnaround between end of gospels [...]…

This podcast, suggesting a gentle wry smile in Dt 1:6 was inspired by a blog post from Rabbi Michal Shekel “Could it be possible to stay too long at the site of Revelation?” There are also quotes from: Tigay, J. Deuteronomy. Jewish Publication Society, 1994, 8; and Rashi on Dt 1:6. As well as Dt [...]…

In this post we’ll discover some humour from below. The humour of the oppressed often pokes fun at the oppressor. Those who subjugate others fear them, and this fear generates feelings of inferiority that in Exodus some oppressed women manipulate delightfully.   Please open your Bibles at Exodus 1-2.   So, here’s the link to [...]…

In a post Why the Bible is just not (so) funny David returned to a theme he’s argued before, that the Bible is not funny. Aparently back in 2007 he issued a challenge that readers of his blog could not give examples of humour from every book in the Bible: Funny Stuff in the Bible. [...]…

The prophet Jonah (at least as his story is told in the book that bears his name) is perhaps the most orthodox if perhaps the most heteropractic1 prophet in the Bible! Yet this book perhaps better than any other in the Old Testament encapsulates the essential truths of Scripture. [For more on the "Perspicuity of [...]…

I’ve already a podcast on Jonah 1:7-8 Direct speech in biblical narratives if you want a fill in between the last podcast and this one. Had you noticed? We were eight verses into the book and Jonah had not said one word. In Jonah 1:1-8 not a peep out of Jonah the prophet, so 1:9 [...]…

In these two verses we get some more clues about how to read the book of Jonah, we’ll notice how everything is big, and how the ship has personality. I’ll suggest that Jonah is in some ways like a children’s story, larger than life and painted in bright primary colours. I’ll even suggest that there [...]…

As a counterbalance to Jonah I’ll take Psalm 69. I’m considering it as typifying many Bible passages where people pray imprecation on evil people (usually their own enemies, but sometimes the enemies of others). Something deep in us wants to believe that God is just. Such prayers appeal to this. .   Right-click here to [...]…

In this short series (of two podcasts) I’ll describe two things I think I know, two stakes in the ground when I come to think about the topic of “universalism” that has been much discussed (and even more an excuse for slanging matches) recently around the Bible-focused blogs. Let’s start by admitting there are many [...]…

Back in the days before I was a professional Bible teacher I could never have imagined anyone wanting to rip the book of Jeremiah from Scripture. Jeremiah the emotional prophet, who speaks sometimes such lovely promises, who expresses how his own and God’s hearts are torn by the terrible future (and present) Judah’s apostasy and [...]…

Gavin in his post “Mrs. God” linked to my recent podcasts about Yahweh’s wife, he notes one area for discussion: I’m a bit worried about the distinction Tim makes between a historically married god and a theological entity who wasn’t, but it’ll be interesting to see where it all leads. To respond in this podcast [...]…

In this podcast I’ll briefly argue that since the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) regularly pictures Yahweh as intimately associated with both forming in the womb and birthing, and particularly since “his” role is often as midwife “he” cannot be thought of as a male god. Rather “he” is God and as later (though very early [...]…

Francesca Stavrakopoulou closed her article “Why the BBC’s new face of religion believes God had a WIFE” saying: I can’t help but wonder what the world would be like had the goddess remained. Let’s explore the evidence and try to answer her speculation. This evidence comes mainly from surrounding peoples, though the Bible has some [...]…

In this podcast I’ll suggest that noticing the importance of why we read Scripture can help clarify at least the theological question about the genocide of the Canaanites. Listen to my previous two posts for more on how knowing why we read matters: Why do you read? Or: Was God married? Are you an idolater? [...]…

I know I promised two sequels to yesterday’s podcast. But I think I need first to explore the theme of the gender of God (Yahweh) in the Old Testament, and the evidence for Yahweh’s wife, a bit more first. Bear with me and we will get to “Why do you read? Part two: The genocide [...]…

The Daily Mail (a UK tabloid newspaper) carried an article “Why the BBC’s new face of religion believes God had a WIFE”1 It caused a flurry among the Twittering classes, and on Facebook, and even among the biblioblogs (though in the latter group most dismissed the article saying: What can you expect from a British [...]…

Way back, at the turn of the century, I wrote an article for  Festschrift volume: Tim Bulkeley, “Where do you read.” in Mission without Christendom: exploring the site, essays for Brian Smith (Carey Studies in Theology) Auckland: Carey Baptist College, 13-22. Among other things it noted how the assumptions and cultural baggage we bring to [...]…

We looked at this passage in class last week. I’ve based this podcast on my own very literal translation (so as to make spotting how if works easier). The translation with a couple of explanatory notes is here: Jeremiah 4:23-27 (translation and notes) . Right-click here to save the podcast for this audio…

In some Bible passages as atheists and others who want to avoid the claims of God are quick to point out God sounds like a Dalek. Deut 7:2 is a typical case. When the LORD your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties [...]…

My earlier podcast: The last Confession of Jeremiah: Jeremiah 20: Yahweh seduces his prophet I simply assumed the translation seduce” for patah But “seduce” is not a translation favoured by English translations. I dealt with this issue briefly in a blog post Did Yahweh seduce Jeremiah? with a bibliographic note Did God seduce Jeremiah? Addendum [...]…

Sorry this podcast is firstly out of order (it should have come before the last confession and then late (it should also have come a while back but I’ve been busy trying to get a paper on Isaiah finished This fourth confession illustrates strongly both the dramatic narrative character of these “confessions” and that they [...]…

In the previous two podcasts in this series I’ve introduced “the Confessions of Jeremiah” and the first confession (11:18-12:6). Here we’ll look at this text from the point of view of how it portrays the characters of Jeremiah (in…

Before thinking about this “confession” we’ll first look at lament psalms briefly. Lament psalms often contain: an address (maybe simply “O God” or “O Lord”) a/some complaint(s) a request for help addressed to God the affirma…

A series of passages in Jeremiah stand out because of their contents which presents itself as powerful debates about Jeremiah, his call, his enemies and his God. In some of them Jeremiah seems to be speaking alone, in otgher God responds. These “Con…

We’ve just recorded the video for the new CareyMedia DVD, this year it is conversations between small groups of us, one I was involved in was about worship. So, here I want to suggest that Leviticus (esp. Lev 19:1-2) and Isaiah 6 can help us come ba…

I once made a silly offer: “Give me a random Old Testament passage, and I’ll show you how the 5 step process works!” So they offered me 2 Kings 10, the lovely story of the seventy heads offered to Jehu in baskets. (Read it yourself if yo…

In our student exegesis assignments we ask them to state the intended meaning for the ancient hearers, ideally in one sentence, maybe two, never more than 50 words. They commonly have two problems. The first is being brief ;) I have a Sansblogue post on w…

The flat out contradictions in Scripture make Bible readers jumpy.Conservatives seek to defend the “integrity” of Scripture by denying that there is any (even the slightest) disagreement, those on the other side delight in the “proofR…

“I am making everything new” what a wonderful promise! Not just a repair or clean up, but a renewed creation. Back in Genesis, the new line that started with Seth instead of Cain (the murderer) failed, after the flood Noah who was “a righteous man,…

With this reading, skipping all the confusing stuff about the seven seals and the seven bowls, and most of the material about the false bride (the whore of Babylon), we come straight to the end of the beginning in chapter 19. We’ve returned to the t…

If you’ve been wonderoing when all the visions in Revelation begin, wonder no more. Today’s reading is full of visions. A throne in heaven: for God alone rules heaven and earth. One sitting on it: God is not named, for that would be too famili…

Most listeners to this podcast, judging by the website stats, come from comfortable Western countries. If this is you (and it is ME) then most of what is said to the first six churches does not closely fit us, though it more often gives us goals to aim fo…

This reading introduces the book and Revelation needs introducing because it is a difficult book. Among its oddities are the rhetorical flourishes (present elsewhere in the Bible but very strongly featured here), the use of picture language (which interes…

The book calls itself the apokalupsis of Jesus Christ – the revelation the disclosure of hidden things – so like parts of Daniel it will show us glimpses “behind the scenes” of the world letting us see a bit of what Christ is doing off stage.…

Beware this reading is dangerous! After readings from Peter and then James, the E100 gives us another reading from one of the less Greek of the NT writers. Like James John circles round his topic and returns to the same “place” (though having moved forwar…