How Angels Found their Wings

Sam Harrelson on December 29, 2022

How Angels Found their Wings | History Today:

The angels of the Bible were not winged. (The winged Cherubim and Seraphim are figures derived from the Near Eastern tradition of winged zoomorphic guardian figures and are not angels since they perform none of the angelic functions.) In fact, in the Old Testament angels are often not clearly distinguished from humans at all. The New Testament letter to the Hebrews recommends: ‘Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.’ When angels are clearly identified in the New Testament, they are distinguished from ordinary humans by markers first found in Old Testament books, such as gleaming white robes, or a countenance like lightning – but no wings.

New Reading of the Mesha Stele

Sam Harrelson on May 2, 2019

Potentially huge (I appreciate Thomas Römer‘s scholarship a great deal):

A name in Line 31 of the stele, previously thought to read ‘House of David’, could instead read ‘Balak’, a king of Moab mentioned in the biblical  of Balaam (Numbers 22-24), say archaeologist Prof. Israel Finkelstein and historians and biblical scholars Prof. Nadav Na’aman and Prof. Thomas Römer, in an article published in Tel Aviv: The Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University.

New reading of Mesha Stele could have far-reaching consequences for biblical history – Phys.org

Sam’s Bible Read Through Plan

Sam Harrelson on January 6, 2019

I’m making something for you that’s available here for you to make a copy of for your own use, download, print, or save for your own additions and edits. It’s a work in progress and will be continually worked on in the coming weeks. But you can start using it now.

Over the last several months on Instagram, I’ve been posting images and short thoughts that come to me during or after my daily Bible studies, mostly with my old and rapidly deteriorating Harper Collins Study Bible I bought as a college sophomore in 1997 and continued to use to store notes from classes there and at Yale Divinity and then Gardner-Webb as well as the various classes I’ve taught and Sunday School series I’ve led over the years.

These Instagram pictures started as a quick way for me to share something personal in a format that I thought others might enjoy. Over the last few weeks as I’ve continued to post these, I’ve had a number of people ask if I’m using a certain plan or just going through the Bible and picking out my favorite passages.

These questions have caused me to formalize my approach and finally take the time to write it down. The attached read-through here is a work in progress but I wanted to go ahead and post this so that people can follow along in the New Year if they’d like (I’ve got January and February finished that includes Matthew – Mark in the New Testament and Genesis – Leviticus in the Old Testament). I say this is a work in progress because I’ll be continuing to add texts for March – December in the coming weeks. I’ also will be adding notes and thoughts directly on the document as I do my studies and interesting links and images that are relevant. But make a copy and make this yours as you see fit.

The read-through is the product of studying the Bible for the last twenty-two years from a Liberal Arts College perspective as well as an Ivy League Div School and a Baptist Seminary. Part of it is based on an old Cokesbury Bible reading guide that I picked up at the United Methodist General Assembly in 1999 shortly before I went into the woods to be a counselor at Asbury Hills UMC Camp in Upstate South Carolina. I fell in love with their reading guide while at Asbury and in the years after. I’ve certainly made alterations based on my own studies and connections I’ve made. But I’ve kept the overall structure of a yearly Bible read-through cover-to-cover.

Ultimately, we can all agree that we need to read more in 2019. I would argue that Americans can benefit a great deal personally and as a country, if we “read the Bible” more often. That doesn’t mean it has to be with a lens of a certain theology or with an aim to save souls. The Bible is a fascinating collection of stories of people wrestling with God and with each other and with the land and with the seas. We would all benefit to turn attention to these with the goal of understanding and making connections rather than just finding snippets of text that confirm our preexisting biases and unexamined privileges.

“to queer the prophetic body”

Sam Harrelson on March 16, 2018

Rather, she is interested in how queerness, in all of its polysemy, “works” in the prophetic texts. Her aim is to “trace the prophetic body as a queer object and to queer the prophetic body” (p. 7)—a project that is both queer and feminist. The result is an imaginative, illuminating investigation into the bodies of various Hebrew Bible prophets.

Source: Book Note | Are We Not Men? Unstable Masculinity in the Hebrew Prophets — ANCIENT JEW REVIEW

Interesting… will definitely read!

Wrestling With the Text

Sam Harrelson on July 29, 2017

I’ll be preaching on Genesis 32:22-31 (Jacob wrestles God / Angel / River Demon / Jungian Archetype … depending on your persuasion) at First Christian Church Columbia, SC on August 6. This is probably my favorite text in the entire Bible and I’m excited that it comes up in the lectionary next week.

I always wonder how others read this story. Leave me a comment here or on Facebook, Twitter, email etc and let me know.

I’ll post the sermon when I’m done, but maybe you can impact in how that turns out.

“The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’

So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.”

 

Thinking Religion 115 and Hermeneutics

Sam Harrelson on July 19, 2017

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Thomas is in Philadelphia this week but we still managed to sneak in a podcast episode. We start by going over the very important but often-overlooked general idea of hermeneutics and why we should take them seriously in the Age Of Trump (AOT from here on out). Then we hop into the Bible Bracket Challenge. Sorry, Ruth.

Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the concept of hermeneutics and continue their ongoing quest to decide the best book in the Bible from the Thinking Religion Bible Bracket Challenge.

via Thinking Religion Episode 115: Your Hair Is Like a Flock of Goats