BROWSE THE COLLECTION
Author: Marc Bates
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The Petra Genesis and the Revisionist Revision of Islamic Origins: A Historical-Critical and Biblical-Theological Appraisal
This essay examines historical-critical challenges to the Standard Islamic Narrative S.I.N.) regarding the origins of Islam, focusing on geographical, archaeological, and textual arguments that situate early Islamic sanctuaries in northern Arabia and the Levant—particularly the Nabataean region around…
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The Sacredness of Life as a Cardinal Ethical Norm: An Incarnational, Ontological, and Promise-Plan Synthesis
This study constructs a biblical-theological defense of the sacredness of human life as a cardinal ethical norm in Christian ethics. Grounded primarily in Chapter 8 (“So Much Value: The Sacredness of Life”) of David P. Gushee and Glen…
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The Two Trees in the Cosmic Temple: Royal Priesthood, Moral Autonomy, and the Architecture of the Promise-Plan
Contemporary Christian systematic theology frequently interprets the primeval narratives of Genesis 1 3 through post-biblical Western categories, reducing the cosmic architecture of creation and the drama of human failure to legal contracts or biological mechanics.
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Matthew 12: An Exegetical and Biblical-Theological Commentary
Matthew 12 marks a critical turning point in the Gospel narrative, shifting from initial heraldic proclamation to overt conflict between the Messiah, Jesus, and the ruling religious establishment. Within the overarching framework of God’s promise-plan, this chapter demonstrates…
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Genesis of Genealogy
The Gospel of Matthew opens not with a static civic registry but with a carefully engineered theological overture. Tracing the genealogy and birth narrative of Jesus (Matt. 1:1–25) and the Gospel’s larger instructional architecture, this essay argues that…
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Internal Bridges: Using the Qurʾān to Defend Christ’s Divinity within the Architecture of the Promise-Plan
This essay examines the apologetic method of “internal bridges,” often paired with the so-called Islamic Dilemma, as a text-immanent strategy in contemporary Christian–Muslim encounter.
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The Unified Gospel: Reconciling Jesus and Paul
For more than a century, New Testament scholarship and popular Christian discourse have frequently posited a fundamental theological rupture between Jesus of Nazareth and the Apostle Paul.
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The Ashtiname of Muhammad and the Corpus of Prophetic Covenants:
This essay offers a historical-critical, codicological, and biblical theological appraisal of the Ashtiname of Muhammad—the charter of protection traditionally associated with Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai—and of the broader corpus of so-called Prophetic Covenants.
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The Order of Melchizedek:
The figure of Melchizedek presents an unusual hermeneutical phenomenon: an obscure patriarchal character confined in the Hebrew Bible to Genesis 14 18 20 and Psalm 110 4 who nevertheless becomes a cornerstone of Second Temple eschatology and New…
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Matthew 11: An Exegetical and Biblical-Theological Commentary
Following the second major teaching block in the Gospel—the Mission Discourse of Matthew 10—Matthew 11 marks a critical narrative pivot from the instruction of the Twelve to widespread public evaluation and opposition. Positioned within Walter C. Kaiser Jr.’s…