Bible and Theology on Genealogies

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In Scripture, adoption meddles with genealogies, subverts oppressive empires, secures imperial inheritances, and opens new possibilities for who can be family.

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Patrilineal & Patrilocal Life in Ancient Israel

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Sandra L. Richter

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Scripture

Genesis 35:, Genesis 36:, Numbers 26:33, Numbers 27:1-11, Numbers 36:1-12, Joshua 17:3-6, Matthew 1:

The term patrilineal has to do with tracing ancestral descent (and therefore tribal affiliation and inheritance) through the male line. In Israel the possessions of a particular lineage were carefully...

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The Prayer of Jabez Revisited

Author

Ben Witherington III

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Scripture

1 Chronicles 4:9-10, Matthew 6:6, Luke 11:9, Philippians 4:6, James 5:16

First Chronicles 4:9-10 could be forgiven for being called the text that roared, once Bruce Wilkinson got his hands on it and wrote a little book called The Prayer of Jabez. This book, which was relea...

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Author

Eugene H. Peterson

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The biblical fondness for genealogical lists is not dull obscurantism, it is an insistence on the primacy and continuity of people. Each name is a burnished link connecting God’s promises to his fulfi...

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Decended from Royalty

Author

James Merritt

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Scripture

Matthew 1:

The actress Brooke Shields has quite an impressive family mosaic. Hanging from her family tree are the likes of Charlemagne, El Cid, William the Conqueror, the royal houses of virtually every European...

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The Holy Spirit’s Literary Genre Of Choice

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Eugene H. Peterson

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Story is the primary way in which the revelation of God is given to us. The Holy Spirit’s literary genre of choice is story. Story isn’t a simple or naive form of speech from which we graduate to the ...

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The Ancestry of Jesus

Author

Nancy Guthrie

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Scripture

Matthew 1:1-6, Luke 5:31-32, Matthew 9:12-13, Matthew 5:3, Galatians 3:26-28

We find hope in the ancestry of Jesus that no matter what we’ve done or where we come from, we too can be included in Jesus’ family. Jesus does not look for people who are perfect and have never faile...

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A Christian Alzheimer’s Disease

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Sandra L. Richter

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Two-thirds of the story of redemption is known to Christians as the Old Testament. Yet in the decades that I have been teaching Bible, I have found that most Christians, if allowed to answer honestly,...

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Author

James Merritt

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Grace

Scripture

Matthew 1:, Luke 1:26-38, 2 Samuel 11:12, Ruth 1:4, Joshua 2:

Through Jesus’s family tree, God puts his grace on display. God is reminding us that he can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves: pick up broken pieces and put them together, take broken lives an...

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James Merritt

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Long before we were born, God was overseeing our future as well. We didn’t choose our ancestors; God did. God designates our identity, as he did with Jesus, so that we might fit into his plan for the ...

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Our Overstory and Understory

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Mark Batterson

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In the world of ecology, the tallest trees in a forest form a canopy that is called the overstory. It provides shade for the understory—all the vegetation that grows beneath the uppermost layer of fol...

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God Gets His Family Back

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In my lifelong study of the Bible I have looked for an overarching theme, a summary statement of what the whole sprawling book is about. I have settled on this: “God gets his family back.” From the fi...

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The Covenants of Scripture

Author

Merrill F. Unger

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Covenant

Scripture

Hebrews 13:20, Genesis 1:26-28, Genesis 1:26, Genesis 3:14-19, Genesis 3:14, Genesis 8:20-9, Genesis 9:5-6, Genesis 12:1-3, Galatians 3:16, John 8:56-58, 2 Corinthians 3:7-9, Deuteronomy 30:1-10, Deuteronomy 30:1, 2 Samuel 7:4-17, Luke 1:31-33, Acts 1:6, Revelation 19:16, Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, Hebrews 8:8-12, Galatians 3:13-20

Eternal covenant, Heb 13:20—The redemptive covenant before time began, between the Father and the Son. By this covenant we have eternal redemption, an eternal peace from the ‘God of peace’, through th...

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Author

Glen Scrivener

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Jesus

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Genesis 3:15, Romans 5:18-19, Ephesians 1:5, Luke 15:11-32, 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, Genesis 22:8, Matthew 4:1-11

The hope is held out [in Genesis] that one day the Son would be a second Adam, born to answer the first. . . . And this second Adam would give us a second family to belong to—God’s.

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The Story of Joseph & High and Low Cultures

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E. Randolph Richards and Richard James

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We individualists generally belong to what anthropologists term low-context cultures. That means that when we communicate, we assume a low level of shared information. We therefore assume it is good c...

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Story as Worldview and the Example of Passover

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N. T. Wright and Michael Bird

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Stories, after all, are one of the most basic modes of human life and are a characteristic expression of worldview. Human life is constituted by a series of stories, implicit and explicit, that makes ...

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Father of heirs and orphans, Salvation

Author

Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia

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Father of heirs and orphans, Salvation of saint and sinner, Draw near and forgive us. Forgive us for clinging to law more than grace. Forgive us for choosing slavery when you offer us adoption. Forgi...

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The Dickensian Approach to Storytelling (Or, Rather, the Biblical Approach)

Author

Mark D. Roberts

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Scripture

Genesis 1:, John 1:1-3

Sometimes great stories introduce the protagonist in the very first paragraph. In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, for example, we are immediately introduced to Pip, the central figure of the nov...

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Author

N. T. Wright

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Many first-century Jews thought of themselves as living in a continuing narrative stretching from earliest times, through ancient prophecies, and on toward a climactic moment of deliverance which migh...

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Ephesians 2:1-22 | From Death to Life in God’s Family

Author

Bradley Long

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Scripture

Ephesians 2:1-22

Context Standard Letter Format Recall the Greco-Roman letter form that Paul uses in Ephesians: Salutation and Greeting Thanksgiving Body Exhortations/Encouragements Closing/Farewell...

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The Bible has its Own Garden Path

Author

Murray Andrew Pura

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Scripture

Genesis 2:8, Genesis 3:23-24, Exodus 15:27, Song of Solomon 4:12-15, John 18:1, Matthew 26:36

The Bible has its own garden path. It runs from Genesis to Revelation. In fact, some of the most important events in the Christian faith take place in Biblical gardens, evens around which Christianity...

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Leaving Home

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E. Randolph Richards and Richard James

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Scripture

Genesis 12:10-20, Exodus 3:15

“When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman” (Gen 12:14). What is considered beautiful is one of those things that often goes without being said. Sarah was about...

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Two Examples of Long Memories

Author

Kenneth E. Bailey

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The Reliability of Scripture

As an amateur yet serious student of the American Civil War, I am constantly amazed at the sheer volume of material, which was preserved orally for half a century and longer, surrounding the key figur...

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Comparing the Genesis Creation Account with their Neighbors

Author

A. J. Swoboda

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Scripture

John 1:3, Psalm 104:24, Genesis 2:2-3, Genesis 1:27, Genesis 1:31

The Jews were not the only religious people in the ancient world. There were others, such as the Akkadians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, and they had their own creation stories. When one compares the ...

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Adapted from Hebrews 11:8

Author

Austin D. Hill

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Scripture

Hebrews 11:8

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. Obeyed and went, And he went out, not knowing where he was going. Loving God, give us...

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Polemic Against Paganism

Author

Nahum Sarna

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Scripture

Genesis 1:, Genesis 2:, Exodus 3:14, Deuteronomy 4:14-19, 1 Corinthians 1:16-17

Whether the Hebrew Genesis account was meant to be science or not, it was certainly meant to convey statements of faith. As will be shown it is part of the biblical polemic against paganism and an int...

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From the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem

Author

Jen Pollock Michel

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Scripture

Isaiah 25:8, 1 Corinthians 15:52-53, Revelation 21:1-4, Revelation 22:1-5, Philippians 3:20-21, Hebrews 13:14

The biblical narrative begins and ends at home. From the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem we are hardwired for place and for permanence, for rest and refuge, for presence and protection. We long fo...

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Lord God, heavenly Father, You promised Abraham

Author

Trinity Lutheran Church, Lisle, Illinois

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Scripture

Genesis 11:27-32, Genesis 12:1-9

Pastor: Lord God, heavenly Father, You promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, You led him to the land of Canaan, People: and You sealed Your covenant with him by the shedding ...

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Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 12:33-34, Luke 18:28-30, Acts 2:44-45, Matthew 19:21, Mark 10:29-30, Luke 14:26

Family and property, then, were not for the ancient Jew simply what they are to the modern western world. Both carried religious and cultural significance far beyond personal, let alone “individual,” ...

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Author

Bernard of Clairvaux

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We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, bu...

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