BROWSE THE COLLECTION
Author: Marc Bates
-
Torah and the Believer
The ongoing validity of Mosaic Torah in the life of the New Covenant believer remains among the most contested questions in contemporary biblical theology. Post-Enlightenment statutory jurisprudence, Lutheran law–grace dualisms, and dispensational epochal fractures have frequently recast Sinai…
-
The Scriptural and Historical Continuum
This essay evaluates the Qurʾān’s own defense of prior Abrahamic Scripture against later Islamic charges of wholesale textual corruption (taḥrīf al-lafẓ) and against the dogma of letter-perfect inlibration.
-
The Greek Textual Matrix of Christian Theology
This essay examines the Septuagint (LXX)—the ancient Koine Greek translation of Israel’s Scriptures—as a primary witness to Second Temple textual plurality, as the dominant scriptural matrix of the New Testament writers, and as a providential medium through which…
-
The Architecture of Epangelical Theology
Contemporary biblical scholarship and ecclesial practice often inherit post-Enlightenment partitions that either fragment the canon into disconnected administrative epochs or spiritualize the concrete promises given to ethnic Israel.
-
Neo-Gnosticism and the Hellenistic Fracture
Contemporary Western spirituality often presents itself as innovative while rehearsing an ancient pattern: salvation by interior illumination, contempt for embodied and ecclesial life, and the thinning of faith into private feeling or informational technique.
-
Gospel Ethics in Philippians
Contemporary Christian ethics faces a crisis of authority, coherence, and identity when moral reflection is detached from redemptive narrative and reduced to post-Enlightenment decisionism.
-
Psalm 11: An Exegetical and Biblical-Theological Commentary
Positioned within the early Davidic collection of the Psalter, Psalm 11 functions as a psalm of confidence framed within the genre of lament. Traditionally associated with David’s period of wilderness exile and flight from King Saul, the psalm…
-
Exodus 5: An Exegetical and Biblical-Theological Commentary
Exodus 5 marks a critical turning point in God’s unfolding promise-plan. Following YHWH’s self-revelation at the burning bush (Exod 3) and Moses’s return to Egypt (Exod 4), the initial diplomatic effort to secure Israel’s release collapses into acute…
-
Exodus 4: An Exegetical and Biblical-Theological Commentary
Exodus 4 marks a pivotal turning point within the progressive unfolding of God’s promise-plan, moving the narrative from Moses’s initial commissioning at the burning bush to his concrete deployment as Yahweh’s mediator.
-
The Fiscus Judaicus and the Parting of the Ways
Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Emperor Vespasian instituted the fiscus Judaicus, an annual poll tax of two drachmae (two denarii) levied on Jews throughout the Roman Empire.