I’m old enough to remember when a boatload of academics poo pooed anything to do with online learning while a few of us were doing it before it became the in thing.
None of them have ever apologized. Or said ‘we were wrong and you were right’.
They just followed the leader. They just suckled at the teats of their betters and predecessors and then trundled off to pretend that they had come up with the whole thing themselves.
Dishonest to the core and eternally known to be such.
True Fact.
The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that God is trustworthy—that we can trust in Jesus’s defeat of death to lead us to eternal life. Complicating this crucial message, the letter’s enigmatic origins, dense intertextuality, and complex theological import can present challenges to believers wrestling with the text today.
Amy Peeler opens up Hebrews for Christians seeking to understand God in this learned and pastoral volume of Commentaries for Christian Formation. Her fresh translation and detailed commentary offer insights into Christology, the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, and the letter’s canonical resonances. She pays special attention to how the text approaches redemption, providing consolation for the anxious and correction for the presumptuous.
Peeler explains the letter’s original context while remaining focused on its relevance to Christian communities today. Pastors and lay readers alike will learn how Hebrews helps them know, trust, and love God more deeply.
In a word, this is the finest, most practical, most useful commentary I have read on the book of Hebrews, and that I have enjoyed as much as I did Ernst Kasemann’s ‘The Wandering People of God’.
Her treatment of the text is simply majestic, accurate, insightful, and profound. For instance, her sage remarks (which I will leave to you to read in their entirety), on Hebrews 10:25, are elegant and prophetic. ‘This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God’.
She’s not afraid to deal with the ‘hard’ texts (like Hebrews 6:4-8 and 10:26ff) and yet she is wise enough to avoid being careless or cavalier. She opens her exposition of 6:4ff with this good guidance:
Maturity is necessary for engaging such a passage as this, yet it is frequently the young in faith who encounter it and react in fear, worried that through some sin they have fallen away and, therefore, can never return to God. If someone is heartbroken that they may have fallen away from the faith, that concern over one’s relationship with God is evidence that they have not fallen away (p. 164). Etc.
Her writing style is folksy and friendly and endearing and enlightening and kind and pastoral in the absolute best sense of that tortured word. Her theological insights are top notch. Her exegesis is virtually flawless. Her mind works, it seems, like a vessel of the Holy Spirit. She is inspired. And inspiring. I wish I could write as well as she does (and I have to confess, without pridefulness, that I am a darned good writer).
She fully discusses all the usual academic stuff. Date, author, audience, etc. And she does it all with utter clarity and absolute fairness.
There are footnotes, a bibliography, a subject index, an author index, and a scripture and ancient sources index.
Wheaton, where she teaches, is lucky to have her. If her classes are as engaging as her commentary, those kids are beyond measure most blessed. I hope they appreciate the gift they have in her.
Many have set themselves the task of commenting on Hebrews. No one in my experience has done it better than Peeler.
No one.
The pretend church is. And it should be.
Christian, I think I see it clearly now: politics has engrained itself in the soil of America as a religion, promising a form of salvation. The political Left & Right are fighting for our allegiance and imagination. But our allegiance is to the Lamb, not a donkey or elephant. – Derwin Gray
Absolutely true.
The Jesus of the liberal left never existed. Nor did the Jesus of the conservative right. He is a product of their ideological imagination: a projection of their views into the past.
And today’s GOP-
Pierrick Hildebrand’s dissertation has been published in English.
This book offers a fresh interpretation of covenantal theology in the Reformation by demonstrating how the writings of the Zurich reformers Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) and his successor Heinrich Bullinger (1504-75) decisively shaped a foundation of the Reformed tradition. The book overturns previous research that has both emphasized Zurich’s irreconcilability with later developments of Reformed covenant theology and downplayed the contribution of the Zurich theologians in favor of figures such as Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) and John Calvin (1509-64). It argues for the dependence of Calvin and other leading figures on Zurich and for continuity in the later Reformed tradition with its origins in the 1520s.
Pierrick Hildebrand demonstrates that the concept of a prelapsarian covenant, generally used as an argument for discontinuity between Zurich and Heidelberg, was clearly present in Zwingli and Bullinger. Further, Bullinger’s covenantal terminology, which integrates the concept of the covenant with union with Christ, was adopted by Calvin and later by the Heidelberg theologians. Rejecting the idea that Zurich and Geneva represented two different traditions, Hildebrand details significant continuities and agreement while paying attention to differences. To do this, he draws on printed texts but also makes extensive use of previously unexamined manuscript sources, such as commentaries and sermon notes, to provide a much fuller account of the origins of Reformed covenantal theology. Working across a range of literary genres and with careful attention to historical contexts, this book presents the evolution of a crucial part of Reformation thought in a new light.
And while we’re talking about Pierrick’s work, take a look at this interview from a few years back:
Why are so many scholars more interested in finding shortcuts to knowledge rather than just digging in and doing the hard work? Why do some seem to want to make use of an Idiot’s Guide to whatever? Why has scholarship been ‘interlinear-ized’?
Calvin dedicated his Commentary on Hebrews to Sigismund Augustus on 23 May, 1546. He begins thusly
THERE are at this day many foolish men, who everywhere, through a vain desire for writing, engage the minds of ignorant and thoughtless readers with their trifles. And to this evil, most illustrious King, is added another indignity—that while they inscribe to kings and princes their silly things, to disguise, or at least to cover them by borrowed splendour, they not only profane sacred names, but also impart to them some measure of their own disgrace.
Since the unreasonable temerity of such men makes it necessary for serious and sober writers to frame an excuse, when they publicly dedicate their labours to great men, while yet there is nothing in them but what corresponds with the greatness of those to whom they are offered, it was necessary to make this remark, lest I should seem to be of the number of those who allow themselves, through the example of others, to render public anything they please, however foolish it may be.
But it has not escaped me how much it has the appearance of foolish confidence, that I, (not to speak of other things,) who am an unknown and obscure man, should not hesitate to address your royal Majesty. Let my reasons be heard, and if you, O King, approve of what I do, what others may judge will cause me no great anxiety.
And then he does what Calvin does. He writes exceptionally helpful things.
I like that duck-
This looks amazing!
Both in our time and in the past, death was one of the most important aspects of anyone’s life. The early modern period saw drastic changes in rites of death, burials and commemoration. One particularly fruitful avenue of research is not to focus on death in general, but the moment of death specifically. This volume investigates this transitionary moment between life and death. In many cases, this was a death on a deathbed, but it also included the scaffold, battlefield, or death in the streets.
Contributors: Friedrich J. Becher, Benedikt Brunner, Isabel Casteels, Martin Christ, Louise Deschryver, Irene Dingel, Michaël Green, Vanessa Harding, Sigrun Haude, Vera Henkelmann, Imke Lichterfeld, Erik Seeman, Elizabeth Tingle, and Hillard von Thiessen.
Savonarola met with the same fate as Hus. He, too, was unsparing in his attack on the corruptions of the Church. On May 23, 1498, he was put to the double death of hanging and burning, and his ashes were thrown into the Arno. A slab in the pavement in front of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence marks the spot where he suffered, and every year on the anniversary of his death the Florentines lay flowers on the slab in homage to his memory.
The Roman Church has always either killed its foes or widened its mouth large enough to swallow and incorporate them.
For those who knew Gerd: The fact that he chose this date to be called back home, appears to be no coincidence and is just so like him, it is bound to put a smile on one’s face. Gerd lived his life to the fullest. Everything he did, he was PASSIONATE about.
Be it:
his youth and young adulthood joy of playing tennis and chess competitively; his path of diligent study and hard work that ultimately led to his globally successful career path — see:
o http://www.gerdluedemann.de
o https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_Lüdemann
o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_Lüdemannhis lifetime quest for the historic truth in his profession; his love of the “sweet stuff” in life: cakes at Cron und Lanz, apples fritters at Donut Den, cherry ice cream, any kind of chocolate just to name a few; his love of setting records of riding rollercoasters with his daughters and winning endless prizes with his amazing gaming skills at Opryland; his love for classical and country music which he would indulge in loudly and vocally; his love of competitive dancing with his wife; his love of spending time playing goofily with his children and grandchildren; his love of watching sporting events, especially cheering enthusiastically for the Nashville Predators and UT Volunteers; his love for simple pleasures, such as walking in the forest, listening to the birds sing, and feeding ducks and squirrels with his favorite foods.
Gerd was enthusiastic about everything that he pursued. He was drawn to the extremes, which contributed to his colorful and unique life.
Gerd was known as someone who “lived outside the box.” He traveled the world, relocating his family multiple times as his career evolved. He easily adapted to new places and new people, needing very little to be content. You could sense his genuine, authentic, free-spirited presence from afar. For example, he spoke from his heart with anybody he met, censored little what he said, and dressed as he pleased (to his wife’s and daughters’ embarrassment).
Gerd lived with Lewy Body Dementia for the past five years. Despite this illness Gerd never lost his interpersonal charm, humor, and love for life. He maintained his famous smile and ‘twinkle in the eye’ until the very end.
Gerd will leave a legacy as a truly remarkable researcher as well as a husband, father and grandfather with a big, generous heart. He will be greatly missed.
He was quite a provocateur and a very, very collegial friend.
How long, Yahweh, am I to cry for help while you will not listen; to cry, ‘Violence!’ in your ear while you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong-doing, why do you countenance oppression? Plundering and violence confront me, contention and discord flourish. And so the law loses its grip and justice never emerges, since the wicked outwits the upright and so justice comes out perverted. (Hab. 1:2-4)
Again, via Chris *The Wickedoer* Tilling-
It was May 23rd, 1862 that the astonishingly brilliant Old Testament scholar Hermann Gunkel was born. Amazingly, in contrast to many scholars (whose books go out of print or end up in the dollar bin in a few months) Gunkel’s work is still being published and is still very much worth reading.
Educated at the University of Göttingen, Gunkel taught there and at Halle, Berlin, and Giessen. A leading member of the “History of Religions school”, he stressed the literary values of the Old Testament by comparative study of the legends on which it draws, particularly in Genesis, Psalms and the Prophets, on which he published works in 1901, 1903, and 1917. Extending his researches beyond current dogmatic interpretations, he promoted the study on literary-historical lines of the religious history of Israel, publishing Die israelitische Literatur (1906; “The Literature of Israel”) and Die Urgeschichte und die Patriarchen (1911; “Earliest History and the Patriarchs”). He contributed Psalmen to the Göttinger Handkommentar zum Alten Testament (1910; “Göttingen Ready Reference Commentary on the Old Testament”), assisted in the first edition of the religious encyclopaedia Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1903–13; “Religion in History and the Present”), and was coeditor of the second edition (1927–32). Together with Wilhelm Bousset he founded the series Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten Testaments und des Neuen Testaments (1903– ; “Research into the Religion and Literature of the Old and New Testaments”).
Should that be insufficient detail (and it should) then get a copy of his biography and read it.
Happy Gunkel Day!
Zwinglius Redivivus 
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