Rereading
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Y is for Yerushalayim
Despite Psalm 51’s focus on personal repentance, the city of peace, Yerushalayim features towards the psalm’s conclusion: Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar. Psalm 51:18–19, NRSV Continue reading
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Malcolm Guite’s ‘David’s Crown’: A Review
Malcolm Guite, David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms, Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2021 Malcolm Guite conceived and wrote this book during the earliest months of the pandemic. There is an irony in this origin, for corona, a word that had eluded most of us until a year ago, can refer to a crown or coronet of poems. Continue reading
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An Enarratio of Psalm 2: Behold God’s Anointed
This post follows on from an earlier post: An Enarratio of Psalm 1: Behold the Man. This is therefore the second in what is an experiment which asks what we miss with modern biblical criticism and what we can gain by sympathy with some aspects of Augustine’s interpretive paradigm for reading the Psalms. It bears Continue reading
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Psalmtweets 21-30
The third of the new psalmtweets posts. These tweets are part of a set of 150 which aim to define the Psalter with a contribution from each psalm. Psalm 21: The Psalms often speak of the King. These words have taken on new significance in Christ. Psalm 22: The Psalms show how desperate need should Continue reading
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An Exploration of the Spirituality of Gustavo Gutiérrez Part 3
In this 3rd post we examine the first of the four themes of the spirituality of Gustavo Gutiérrez that we identified in the 2nd post. Is Gutiérrez’s Biblical Interpretation Legitimate? As Vanhoozer reminds us: ‘Perhaps no twentieth-century philosophers have done more on behalf of hermeneutics than Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur’.[1] Both are inextricably linked to Continue reading
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An Exploration of the Spirituality of Gustavo Gutiérrez Part 2
In this second post we identify and explore 4 key principles of Gutiérrez’s spirituality. Principle One: The Use of Key Biblical Texts as Paradigmatic for Socio-Political Liberation Escobar’s observation is surely correct, although somewhat polemical: ‘the Vatican II Council brought to Roman Catholicism the novelty of placing Scripture back at the heart of the theological Continue reading
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Musing on Hermeneutics and Biblical Interpretation
Over the next few weeks I will be posting a short article each week on hermeneutics, or biblical interpretation. My interest in the Psalms is part of a broader interest in hermeneutics, so it is not a radical departure from what has gone before. But why a focus on hermeneutics? There are so many issues Continue reading
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Praying with Scripture: Some thoughts
The Strange New World of the Bible Praying with the Bible is about having a confidence in the Bible, a confidence that it is Scripture. It is about owning Paul’s words to Timothy: All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may Continue reading
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A Psalm for the 9th Anniversary of New Life Baptist Church
Today is the 9th anniversary of the constitution of the church where I am a member. The following psalm is a Midrash of parts of the Psalms of Ascent which have had a special significance to us over the past few weeks and months. The psalm was used to close our celebration service this morning. Continue reading
About Me
This blog’s central aim is to explore all aspects of how the Psalter (the biblical psalms) functions as Scripture today.
To this end it will also include book reviews on the Book of Psalms and related topics.
Some posts will reflect more broadly on biblical interpretation or hermeneutics.
If you like what you see here and want to arrange for me to give a lecture, run a teaching event or a short retreat based around The Psalms then contact me so we can discuss how this might work.
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