Bully’s Blog

or Insanity and Spiritual Songs

Van Gogh’s work has been regarded by some as “hallucinatory,” however his letters show that few artists were as intelligent and rational. His work was not the product of his dark times but of his struggle against them.

“I am feeling well just now… I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible—and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger and makes haste in what he does.” [1]

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From James B. Jordan’s fascinating Thoughts on Jachin and Boaz [1]

“The Tabernacle and Temple were not only pictures of the kingdom of God. They were also pictures of the human person (John 2:21). We have noted that the High Priest had a chain around his neck, and pomegranates and bells encircling the ephod. Without any difficulty we can see the 1-cubit collar of the pillar as a neckband, the lily as the head, and the bronze shaft as the trunk. The size and proportions are roughly equivalent to those of a 5’ man.
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From James B. Jordan’s Trees and Thorns: [1]

The water in the ground of the garden is associated with Eve.

What Adam was to guard was the Garden, and preeminently Eve, its mistress. This is precisely what he refused to do. Later in the Bible, new Adams meet their Eves at wells, and defend them there. Eliezar met Rebekah at a well, and brought her home to Isaac (Gen. 24:11ff.). Jacob met Rachel at a well, and unsealed it for her — a sign as it turned out of his coming marriage to her (Gen. 29:10-11). Good Shepherd Moses met Zipporah at a well and defended her against bad shepherds (Ex. 2:16-19).

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From James B. Jordan’s Trees and Thorns: [1]

The land and garden of Eden were watered by a spring. Why call attention to the fact that God did not send rain? Why not just mention the spring and leave off the statement about rain? The reason, I believe, is to call our minds back to Genesis 1:2-9. We find in Genesis 1:2 that there was an ocean over the original earth. Then God created the firmament, and separated the waters above from the waters below. On the third day God gathered the waters below into areas below the surface of the land.

Now we have a clear distinction between waters above the firmament, the source of rain, and waters below, which would have to come up from under the earth. Both Genesis 1:2-9 and 2:5-6 set up the distinction eschatologically; ground water comes first, and then heavenly water.

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or Who Is My Neighbour?

“The early taverns were not opened wholly for the convenience of travellers; they were for the comfort of the townspeople, for the interchange of the news and opinions, the sale of solacing liquors, and the incidental sociability; in fact, the importance of the tavern to its local neighbors was far greater than to travellers.”

B’s and V’s get swapped a lot, in Hebrew particularly. Our Old English word tavern (a meeting place) derives via Old French from the Latin taberna, a hut or a dwelling. It is also possibly related to tabula, a table or board, from traberna, which is in turn related to timber beams from trees.

So, we can loosely stitch together a meeting place, alcohol, tables, timber and trees. The Feast of Tabernacles was also known as ingathering, and it involved a lot of expensive meaty sacrifices, and lots of strong drink, with willing strangers welcome to be “ingrafted” as branches into the holy Tree: the perfect picture of the New Covenant Church of God.

This is the theme of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. A ‘Covenant literary analysis’ uncovers some pure gold in the structure of Jesus’ words.

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or Preterism is not a Dirty Word

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One thing that has struck me since becoming a preterist is how much evangelicals play down the badness of the baddies in the New Testament, i.e. the unbelieving Jews and Christian Judaisers.

Evangelicals would never believe that Jesus and the apostles were mistaken in their warnings of an imminent judgment (and let’s face it, this imminence is a facet of the New Testament that is inescapable). So the only other option they see as viable is a position that defies logic: an event that was near, at the doors, yet could happen at any time over next few millennia.

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or Behold, I Make All Things Bloody

A critic wrote that Mel Gibson, with The Passion of the Christ, invented a new cinematic genre: the religious splatter film. This was intentionally disrespectful, but of course there is some truth to it. Perhaps more truth than we realise. God desired a world covered by blood.

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or Mutton Dressed Up as the Lamb

Doug Wilson recently made a distinction between what usually passes for hypocrisy in Christian circles, and the kind practiced openly by the self-righteous:

One of my central pastoral responsibilities is that of keeping Christians away from hypocrisy, of the kind described in the New Testament. But this task, not surprisingly, is often misunderstood — and the reason it is misunderstood is that there are always lots of people who don’t want to be kept out of that kind of hypocrisy, and misdirection is that name of the game.

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Psalm 114 - Family of Blood

Psalm 114 is one of those weird passages of Scripture that makes you wonder if the author was high on something. Without an understanding of the significance of the place of this song among these seven Psalms, the lyrics appear to be either the overly-clever, sophomoric crypticism of an ancient Bono or the fragmented derivatory prattlings of a madman.

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James B. Jordan on Bible Matrix:

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