Faith | Freedom | Family

NO HIDING: Finding Faith & Freedom to walk out an authentic relationship with God, His Family, and His Word. Through: Biblical Studies | Stories | Scholarship

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Written Resources: Scholars & Thinkers

 

SCHOLARS & THINKERS YOU NEED TO KNOW


BIBLICAL SCHOLARS


Tim & Jon at BibleProject

Tim Mackie is a Ph.D. in Semitic Languages and Biblical Studies. He is also a pastor. Jon Collins is a video creator and theological thinker. Together, they create videos, podcasts, and other biblical studies materials intended to break down the world of biblical scholarship and academia down to the layman level. Going through the podcast would be like attending bible school for free for most layman. I cannot recommend them enough. 

Michael S Heiser

Dr. Michael Heiser is most well known for his book Unseen Realm and his Naked Bible Podcast. He is a biblical scholar who focuses on removing church tradition from the interpretation of the biblical text. He is often known for his work on Angels, Demons, and Fringe material. His Naked Bible Podcast goes into depth on textual interpretation of the bible.

  • Unseen Realm is Heiser's most popular book, it talks about what really happened in Genesis 6 and why it matters to what Jesus did. (Amazon affiliate link)
  • Supernatural is the same content but at a more accessible "layman's" level. (Amazon affiliate link)
  • Angels & Demons (two books) redfine everything you've been taught to believe about the beings from the other realm. 
    • Angels: What the Bible Really Says About God’s Heavenly Host
    • Demons: What the Bible Really Says About the Powers of Darkness

Some favorite quotes: Michael Heiser

What the New Testament says about Jesus in this matrix of ideas in Christology has deep, deep Old Testament Ancient Near Eastern roots, and is not just a contrived invention.

 

Think of the “image” of God as a verb, and you’ll get the idea. We were created to image God, to be his imagers—to represent him or be his proxy to each other and to all the earth.

 

You are better off knowing what a passage means than you are memorizing it.

 

Second Temple literature is really important, and therefore, we ought to pay more attention to that material for understanding the Old Testament and how the New Testament uses the Old Testament than to our own denominational traditions. Now that might sound obvious, pay attention to the ancient writers more than you do a modern writer because the ancient writers have the worldview of the cognitive frame of reference in their head. The later guys don’t. That might sound unbelievably simple and elementary and obvious but that is not intuitive for most people in church. It just isn't. They’re not told about that.They're not trained to think that way. They've never seen it modeled for them. The Bible becomes this thing that is filtered through their own personal Christian tradition and that becomes the meaning of the Bible for them. The Bible is used to reinforce something that their group or denomination or church believes. And that just isn’t Bible study. That’s not exegesis.

 

Election and salvation are not synonyms.

 

Yet Christians are trained to think that way about the Bible and the language of the Bible in an entirely different way from the way they use language and that's just a huge mistake. It's a fundamental flaw in the way we think about Scripture.

 

The New Testament is essentially an inspired commentary on the Old Testament. So we need to pay attention to how the New Testament authors read the Old Testament, how they repurposed it, and their understanding of the it is not going to violate the Old Testament in its own original context. In fact, it will build on it. It will reinforce it.

 

NT Wright (Tom Wright)

NT Wright is a scholar, theologian, and Anglican Bishop. He one of the most well known New Testament scholars and has written prolifically at both the scholar-academic level and the layman level. He is often best known for his work on Paul and the New Testament for Everyone translation.

Tom's Books:

Some favorite quotes: NT Wright 

Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should be going now. 
The great drama will end, not with "saved souls" being snatched up into heaven, away from wicked earth and the mortal bodies which have dragged them down into sin, but with the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, so that the "dwelling of God is with humans".  
People who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present. 
The whole point of the Kingdom of God is Jesus has come to bear witness to the true truth, which is nonviolent. When God wants to take charge of the world, He doesn't send in the tanks. He sends in the poor and the meek. 

It is central to Christian living that we should celebrate the goodness of Creation, ponder its present brokenness, and insofar as we can, celebrate in advance the healing of the world, the New Creation itself. Art, music, literature, dance, theater, and many other expressions of human delight and wisdom, can all be explored in new ways.

 

What we have in Genesis (chapter one) is a lavish description of the house that God is making for Himself to dwell in, for Himself to become known and love in His world. And at the heart of it, He puts an image, which is the living, breathing human being - male and female - who now are to reflect God into the world, and reflect the praises of creation back to God.


Do not despise the small but significant act. God probably does not want you to recognize the entire discipline or the entire world of your vocation overnight. Learn to be symbol-makers and story-tellers for the Kingdom of God.

 

Jesus's first followers established a new thing - a network of worship-based, ethically rigorous, egalitarian, philanthropic, fictive kinship groups - "church" for short. 

Dr. John Walton

Dr. John Walton is Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, and has produced a number of books assisting the modern reader in understanding what the ancient Israelites would have instinctively known about the earliest books of the Bible.

Dr. David A. deSilva, Ph.D.

Dr. deSilva is a Professor of New Testament, Greek, and Second Temple studies at Ashland Theological Seminary. Professor deSilva is widely published both at the academic and popular level, including a few novels based in the biblical era. He was interviewed several times by Dr. Heiser on the Naked Bible Podcast, as well as others. 

Dr. Craig Keener

From his website: "Dr. Keener did his Ph.D. work in New Testament and Christian Origins at Duke University and is known for his work as a New Testament scholar on Bible background (commentaries on the New Testament in its early Jewish and Greco-Roman settings). Well over a million of his thirty-plus books are in circulation and have won thirteen national and international awards." - (some Amazon affiliate links)

Paula Fredriksen

From Faculty Page: "Paula Fredriksen, the Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University, since 2009 has been Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem."

Possibly best known for her book:
By Paula Fredriksen
Yale University Press
August 22, 2017
Buy it now from Amazon!

Fredriksen has many of her Journal Articles available on her bio faculty page, here are a few highlights:

  • Fredriksen, Paula. “Putting Paul in His (Historical) Place: A Response to James Crossley, Margaret Mitchell, and Matthew Novenson.” Journal of the Jesus Movement in It’s Jewish Setting, no. 5 (2018): 89–110.




MENTAL HEALTH


Bob Hamp | Think Differently

Bob Hamp, LMFT is a licensed mental health provider and former pastor. After creating the Freedom Ministries department for Gateway Church, he went back to private practice and teaching the core principles around "Thinking Differently".

  • Think Differently Academy; virtual community, books, and courses designed to transform your life by changing not "what" you think but "how" you think.
  • Bob Hamp's Foundations of Freedom videos changed the course of my life. They can be found on his website by signing up for any of the plans (here) or the older/original videos can be found on YouTube (here).
  • If you happen to be in DFW, Think Differently Counseling, Southlake Texas

Dr. Henry Cloud

Dr Henry Cloud may be the world's most well known Christian Psychologist. Best known for his work on Boundaries, which is a must-read for pretty much every human being alive today.




OTHER THINKERS, BOOKS, & BLOGS

BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP BOOKS


FICTION BOOKS


A narrative/story often gets to the heart in ways non-fiction just can't. This is one reason Jesus told parables in his teacing (though his reasons were many and more complicated). Here are some fiction books that helped me see the heart of God for his humans:


BIBLICAL FICTION


Single Titles:
  • TheShack, by William P. Young (Amazon affiliate link)
Author Ted Dekker (Amazon affiliate link)Author Bill Myers (Amazon affiliate link)Author Lauren Stinton (Amazon affiliate link)

SECULAR FICTION
And... some fiction books that are not explicitly biblical but helped me enjoy that part of our reality that we all feel but can't touch, that part just beyond the veil.

Author K.M Wieland (Amazon affiliate link)
Author Brandon Sanderson (Amazon affiliate link)


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