Carmen has given a good reading of the David & Bathsheba story, one mostly that reflects how I've read it over the years. David is clearly at fault; Bathsheba was no seductress.

But I question whether D&B parallels Amnon's rape of Tamar in 2 Sam 13 as she suggests. 1/

https://twitter.com/CTmagazine/status/1549124903705649156

I suspect that how we read the Deuteronomistic History will largely control how we read these horrific narratives.
Specifically, how we evaluate the two stories against Deuteronomy 22:23-27 will have a great bearing on how one interprets them. 2/

Mary did you know…that you would crush the serpent’s head? A 🧵

The depiction of Mary crushing the serpent is foreign to most Protestants, and yet here it is in art and it’s also in bronze at Notre Dame…1/ … University and in many other pieces of western art. Typically, the art is inspired by the inspired text, but this is a case where we must now ask “Which text is doing the inspiring?” 2/

1/ Brushing up on my 16th-century Old Testament canonical history this morning. Here's a bit from Cardinal Cajetan (Tomasso De Vio):
"And in this place, we conclude the commentaries of the Historical books of the Old Testament,... 2/ ...for clearly the remaining books (Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) were reckoned by St Jerome as outside of the canonical books and are placed among the apocrypha along with the book of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus as is plain in the Prologus Galeatus.

Wow. To disagree is to be identified with Pharaoh, slaveholders, and advocating for a docetic hermeneutic. Yet, I will offer a different approach that doesn’t advocate for slavery but keeps the Bible’s metanarrative in view.

https://twitter.com/ThabitiAnyabwil/status/1304850794689290241

1) The literal reading starts in Exod 6 with the freeing of the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, a covenantal approach to a specific oppression in Egypt, which liberation theologians exploit to mean ending all oppression everywhere. But...

1/5 "Stubborn and Rebellious"
In Deut 21:18, 21, the stubborn and rebellious (סוֹרֵ֪ר וּמֹ֫רֶ֥ה) son is to be stoned to death. The collocation "stubborn and rebellious" appears only 4x in #TaNaK: Deut 21:18, 21; Jeremiah 5:23; Psalm 78:8, and they are significant. 2/5 In the two other places, "stubborn and rebellious" describe the heart of the people (Jer 5:23) & the wilderness generation (Ps 78:8), further identifying Israel as the disobedient son of Deuteronomy 21, and it's only a matter of time, sadly, before the death penalty comes.

Canon Order: Thread
1/ There's a spicy debate over the order of books in the Jewish canon & then subsequently the order that the books should have in our Christian Bible today.

Was #Chronicles at the end of Jesus' Bible? 2/ Let's review some evidence.
1 It is said that Jesus' Bible was the long-closed Jewish canon that ended with the books of #Chronicles. Baba Bathra 14b (ca. 200 AD) has this order. But how old and well-known was it?

2 Many argue Matt 23:35//Lk 11:51 support this...

1/ The Complutensian Polyglot’s Prologue is filled with fascinating details about the canon. (cf tweet 3)

1 It affirms #Jerome’s Hebrew Veritas or Truth of the Hebrews.

2 It borrows Jerome’s trifarium: Pentateuch, Hagiographa, and Prophets; three divisions in Heb Bib. 2/
3 It explains the triple languages that its pages contain: Hebrew, Chaldean (Aramaic), & #Greek each w/Latin translation

4 Only the #Pentateuch will contain Chaldean because of the corrupt state of it in the other books

5 The Chaldean was prepared by experts in this language

1/10 The late date for Daniel is also at the heart of the so-called classic model of canonization, which says the Torah (Law) was canonized in the 5th century, the Nebi'im (Prophets) around 200, and the Ketubim (Writings) around 90AD (Daniel included here). Thus in 3 stages. 2/10 Because Daniel was placed in the Writings (so the argument goes), his book must not have been written to make it into the Prophets and had to be included in the third, later stage of the canon, which was closed at the Council of Yavneh/Jamnia around 90 AD.

1/ Listening to a good apologetics podcast (link 👇) today from @DrTimothyPJones, I was especially interested in his answers to the questions on the formation of the canon of Scripture around 40:45. The answer to the NT (about 40:50-46:30) was fine.

The OT one though (46:30)... 2/ I think he captured the early church's view of the deuterocanonical books well when he said "they were some really great books." But the story for how they ended up in the Roman Catholic canon and not the Protestant one is not quite right, IMHO.

1/ Researching #Origen’s philological work on #1Baruch these days. Interesting: Origen may have been the one to give the book its title. A thread summarizing and adapting P-M Bogaert’s insights on the early history of “Baruch.” 2/ Though the debate over whether there was a Hebrew Baruch continues, a consensus appears to be forming that the book only was ever in Greek. Certainly, by Late Antiquity, the book is only known in Greek, but by what title?