Examining the doctrine of Scripture—its inspiration, inerrancy, authority, canon, and interpretation.
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01119 The Old Testament prophets occupy a remarkable place in the history of divine communication. They were not merely gifted teachers or insightful moralists; they were men to whom God actually spoke, and the variety of ways in which He did so tells us something important about both the nature of prophecy and the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01141 Popular culture has a habit of borrowing from Scripture without particularly caring about accuracy. The result is a collection of widely repeated phrases that bear some resemblance to biblical language but carry meanings quite different from, or sometimes entirely absent from, the texts from which they are supposedly drawn. This matters not as…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01173 Few questions in biblical studies generate more heat in certain Christian circles than the debate between the Textus Receptus and the modern critical Greek New Testament. Some regard this as an arcane academic dispute that ordinary believers need not trouble themselves with. It is anything but. The text of the Greek New Testament…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 01176 For anyone who wants to understand how modern Bible translations are produced, or why a translation like the ESV sometimes differs from the King James Bible at particular points, the answer almost always involves the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. This is the standard scholarly edition of the Greek New Testament in widespread academic…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 01183 The name Esdras is the Greek and Latin form of Ezra, and two books bear this title in various versions of the Old Testament: 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras. Neither belongs to the Protestant canon, but the question of whether they are worth reading at all deserves a considered answer rather than a…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 60087 The claim that Constantine created the Bible appears regularly in popular sceptical discussions, was given wide circulation by Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code, and resurfaces periodically in online conversations as though it were settled historical fact. It is not. The claim is historically wrong in virtually every detail, and Christians should…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 60094 The account of Noah and the flood in Genesis 6–9 is one of the most contested passages in all of Scripture. At stake is not merely a point of ancient geography but the character of the biblical text itself, the integrity of Jesus’ teaching, the theological significance of the event, and the coherence…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 60095 The word “firmament” appears in the King James Version of Genesis 1 and has generated considerable discussion ever since, particularly as critics of the biblical account have claimed it reveals a primitive, pre-scientific cosmology in which the ancient Israelites believed the sky was a solid dome. That claim is worth examining on its…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 01200 Scripture is frequently quoted and frequently misunderstood, sometimes because a quotation has been removed from its context, sometimes because a popular rendering has hardened into assumed meaning that the original never carried, and sometimes because the verse is genuinely addressing a different situation from the one it is being applied to. The consequences…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 01197 The letter to the Hebrews is anonymous. That is simply a fact. Unlike Paul’s letters, which consistently identify their author in the opening verse, Hebrews begins without naming anyone. The question of authorship has been debated since the earliest centuries of the church, and the honest answer is that no one can state…