Chapter 3 of Provan, Long, and Longman’s book, A Biblical History of Israel, is entitled “Knowing about the History of Israel.” In this chapter, Provan focuses on four reasons why some modern biblical scholars reject the notion that the Old Testament is actually conveying real history at all. He begins by reemphasizing from chapter 2…
Chapter 2 of Provan, Long, and Longman’s book, A Biblical History of Israel, is entitled “Knowing and Believing—Faith in the Past.” As the title suggests, it focuses on the question of just how do we really know anything about past history? He begins the chapter with a quote from minimalist scholar Thomas Thompson: “There is…
Over the next few weeks, I am going to write an extended book analysis of A Biblical History of Israel by Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman. I’ve used this book in my Biblical History course for the past few years and I feel that it gives a challenging and fascinating overview of…
In this last installment of my brief overview of some of Michael Heiser’s arguments in his book, The Unseen Realm, I am going to focus on what he says about the apostle Paul’s supernatural worldview in regard to the Gospel. First, though, there is the matter of the transition from Jesus in the Gospels to…
We now come to my brief overview of what I feel are some of Michael Heiser’s more significant arguments in his book, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. To make sure everything stays in its larger context, these are the main points discussed in the previous posts: The serpent in Genesis…
In my previous post, Part 2 of my brief book review series of Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm, I looked at Heiser’s take on how the concept of YHWH and His divine council plays out in regard to Genesis 2-3. In short, Heiser gives some substance to the traditional notion that Satan is a fallen…
If you’ve grown up in church, or even if you haven’t, chances are you have a basic understanding of God, man, and everything in between, that goes something like this: (1) There’s God, (2) He created everything in the universe, as well as human beings, (3) There are also good angels (we imagine them in…
A few years ago, biblical scholar Michael Heiser came out with his book, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. From time to time, someone would ask me if I had read it, to which I replied, “Not yet.” Well, to make a long story short, that “not yet” has now come…
Even though I’ve never formally met Frank Schaeffer, he has played a fairly interesting part in my life as a whole, and in my faith journey in particular. In high school in the mid-1980s, it was his book Bad News for Modern Man that convinced me that Christians had to fight the culture war against…
For a variety of reasons, I have not been writing too many new posts for the past few months. Most of my time has been split up three ways: (1) Working on what I hope to be a REAL New Testament Introduction book, geared for people who AREN’T scholars and just want to get a…