Remember in Genesis 15 when Abraham sacrificed animals to make a blood path to cut a covenant with God? You might think that you’d need to go back three thousand years to see this scene, but Rev. Dr. Milly Erema saw her family make covenants this way when she was a kid. Her traditional culture […]
Amazing news about Rev. Dr. Milly Maturu Erema
Those of you who have been following my blog have read that in the past few years I’ve been working with a brilliant Old Testament scholar, Rev. Dr. Milly Maturu Erema, a Ugandan professor with fascinating cultural insights on the biblical world that come from her East African background that resembles the Ancient Near East […]
Free Books on Greek & Hebraic Thought
As I research my next book, I’ve been reading up on Jesus’ Hebraic, Jewish culture and how it contrasts with the Western culture in which we live. I keep bumping into great books I haven’t seen before. I thought I’d share a couple that are free to read or download because they are out of […]
Jesus, the Metaphorical Theologian – Ken Bailey
Ken Bailey has written a number of fascinating books on Jesus in his Middle Eastern context. In his introduction to Finding the Lost Cultural Keys to Luke 15 (Concordia, 1992), he explains a key difference between how Westerners think and communicate and how Jesus did. Westerners primarily communicate in concepts, but Middle Easterners communicate in […]
Learning to Think in Hebrew
I recently told you about some of the interesting Norwegian words I grew up saying, like “uff-da” and “vasakope.” As my immigrant ancestors were learning English, they hung on to words in their mother tongue that did a better job of expressing what they meant to say. My relatives weren’t the only ones doing this. […]
Hesed: Enduring, Eternal, Undeserved Love
Hebrew has a word for life-long love that is richer and deeper than English has ever conceived of—hesed (HEH-sed). Based in a covenantal relationship, hesed is a steadfast, rock-solid faithfulness that endures to eternity: “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love (hesed) for you will not be shaken” […]