On the Hevel Level - A Blog About Nothing

Can you imagine being dropped in the middle of a nation in great turmoil, fighting to re-find its own identity? On the one hand, it might appear that insurmountable social and political forces are at work that would make the task of rediscovering the country’s God given roots seem impossible. At the same time, one could look at some of the resources in play and imagine renewal as a great nation possible. One of the clear challenges is the lack of agreement between factions on how to go about it. On one side of the political spectrum you find one group who insists that faithful keeping of God’s scriptures always results in God’s blessing.  Those focuses on persuading people to understand that if the nation collectively follows God, the blessings he had promised would come to pass.   There’s a subgroup within this group who agree with this point of view but also think that it stops short of necessary action.  In their fervor, they purs...

The Book of Daniel was recently preached through in the church I attend. I appreciated that the pastor went through the whole book and was willing to engage in all the chapters - even the ones with apocalyptic material. Because “Apocalyptic”, as a genre in its Second Temple period form (roughly 530 BCE to 70 CE), is not readily produced today, we often don’t know what to do with it. I want to ask the question, "can we engage in hope in an apocalyptic fashion today?” In order to be able to answer the question, it would be helpful to talk about what apocalyptic is.  Besides the well-known apocalyptic texts within the Bible (especially Daniel and Revelation), there are apocalyptic texts outside of the canon of scripture. These include Esdras (aka 4 Ezra), Apocalypse of Abraham, Apocalypse of Moses as well as at least a couple dozen others. The word itself just means unveiling or revelation. If we go with a genre description from the Anchor Bible Dictionary, it explains tha...