Studies in Scripture and Biblical Theology – serie

"And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split."--Matthew 27:51Many believe that the tearing of the temple curtain means that Jesus's death gave us direct access to God. But this idea is not obvious in the Gospels themselves. What if there is a better explanation?In this book, Adam W. Jones and J. Daniel Hays argue that God the Father tore the curtain of the temple as an act of mourning over his Son's death. This interpretation has been neglected, though it has ancient precedent. In Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures, tearing clothes was a common expression of grief. And early Christian interpreters often linked this custom to the tearing of the temple curtain.The Tearing of the Temple Curtain provides insights on ancient culture, God, grief, and how we approach Good Friday.

The suffering and vindicated kingThe Psalter evinces meaningful arrangement. When psalms are read with attentiveness to their textual context, striking connections emerge. In The Arrival of the King: The Shape and Story of Psalms 15-24, Carissa Quinn approaches these psalms as a compositional unity. When read as a unit, Psalms 15-24 tell the story of God's kingdom, established through the suffering and deliverance of his Davidic king.Quinn interprets Psalms 15-24 as a sequence and a chiasm, revealing provocative links in adjacent and parallel psalms. These psalms have a sense of progress, beginning with the question of who may ascend the holy hill and culminating in the divine king's own ascent. They also display recursion, as themes in one psalm are developed in its chiastic parallel. At the peak of the chiasm is Psalm 19, where the king praises God's creation and Torah and prays for righteousness.The Arrival of the King establishes and explores the rewards of approaching the Psalms as a carefully arranged literary work.