I’ve been absent all year (for reasons I’ll post about another day), but today is an easy post. The FedEx man just left a gift on my doorstep: (I assure you that even though this blog is stuck somewhere in the middle of the book of Daniel, the commentary gets all the way to the…
It’s time to wrap up Daniel 7, but first we should talk a little bit more about the little horn. The little horn appears in two of Daniel’s visions: chapters 7 and 8. In the first, it is an eleventh horn on the fourth beast, displacing three horns when it appears. In chapter 8, we’ll…
The dermatologist recently took a sharp (but sterile) instrument to my foot and then ordered me to elevate it as much as possible and not to exercise for two weeks. These haven’t been hard orders to follow since not even sandals are comfortable when you have stitches on the top of your foot. You’d think…
We’re still in Daniel 7 (“How long, O Lord?”), but today I interrupt that train of thought for a quick look into Daniel 10, where I’ve been living of late in commentary writing. Daniel 10-12 is a really long, really difficult section that begins with a tantalizing text about a divine being (some say Gabriel;…
Pictures this past week of ISIS taking sledge hammers and power tools to ancient artifacts like the magnificent winged-lion here made my heart hurt. Then this weekend I finally got around to reading a sobering article about ISIS ideology, a system rooted in the belief that their fighters will bring in the apocalypse. I don’t…
The greatest barrier to Christianity for Jews is the claim that Jesus is God. Worshiping more than one god got them into a lot of trouble in the Old Testament, so, understandably, they aren’t interested in entertaining the blasphemy that Jesus’ divinity appears to present to monotheism. But what if “monotheism” according to the Old…
We're months away from Daniel 9 in this blog (okay, maybe even years, given the pace...), and you can be grateful for that. Trust me. One commentator has famously called the last part of Daniel 9 (Daniel's "Seventy Weeks") the "Dismal Swamp of O.T. criticism." He really doesn't exaggerate. Trust me. However, I spent many…
Poor Daniel has been languishing in his beastly vision for more than a month while I’ve been doing whatever it is I do instead of blogging…Where does the time go? And more importantly, where were we…? Ah, right. The churning great sea. The “Great Sea” is a common Old Testament way of referring to the…
Last night was National Turn-Back-the-Clock night, which is widely embraced by most people I know (so long as they don’t have small children at home). Hooray for an extra hour to do something (Read: sleep!)! What I can’t figure out is how, with that extra hour of sleep, I ended up yawning my way through…
When I’ve taught Daniel 7 in the past, I’ve often started with some comic relief since I know what’s ahead in the chapter and the rest of the book. That comic relief looks like this: These critters (three of which are currently on craigslist sale – “lion, tiger, and bear! Oh my!”) are ridiculous representations…
