Character in Context

Episode 174: Help! How do I explain Hagar’s story to my kids?

I have actually been dreading this moment since I began the Context for Kids radio show and knew that one day, I would have to cover the Biblical account of Abram and Sarai’s use of Hagar to produce a child. In context, it’s an ugly tale, albeit a common one in the ancient world. I can’t be as blunt about the situation with the kids as I can be with adults and so I am devoting a program over on this side of my ministry with the hopes of helping adults know how to teach children about what is going on in this chapter from beginning to end. As these sorts of accounts are often used in the cultish justification of sexual abuses in the Church, kids really do need to have a decent working knowledge that this sort of situation isn’t okay.

Transcript: https://theancientbridge.com/2023/07/episode-174-help-how-do-i-explain-hagars-story-to-my-kids/

Youtube: https://youtu.be/yDki5L7lTNk

Episode 173: The Study Series 18—Inerrancy, Inspiration, and Authority

What is inerrancy? Depends on who you ask. And yet, with so many definitions and no absolute agreement even on the basics, people sure do a lot of fighting about it. It’s a word that means different things to different people and so, based on what we have covered so far in the study series, what can we believe about the Bible? And does the Bible claim to be inerrant, or something else entirely?


Transcript: https://theancientbridge.com/2023/06/episode-173-the-study-series-18-inerrancy-inspiration-and-authority/

YouTube: https://youtu.be/MSzugzF9s-w

Episode 172: The Study Series 17—Psalms and Laments

How come, when forty percent of the Psalms are laments, plus whole sections of the prophets and the entire book of Lamentations, are worship songs so focused on how hunky-dory life is? Sure, some of the Psalms are praises, but there are fewer praises than sad songs of complaint and hopelessness. As my next series is going to be about the Psalms, it is important that we have a healthy and balanced perspective on how psalms work, what we should expect to find in them, and what they tell us about how to relate to God.

Transcript: https://theancientbridge.com/2023/06/episode-172-the-study-series-17-psalms-and-laments/

YouTube: https://youtu.be/m5w8Q_7z604

Episode 171: The Study Series 16—The Torah, the Sermons and the Problem with Epistles

We’re almost done with genre studies, I promise, so next week will be it. But this time, we have to look at the differences between the Sermons that Yeshua/Jesus delivered and the letters to specific congregations written by Paul, Peter, James and others. When we read a letter (aka epistle) as though it is a sermon, it can lead to some really bad problems. Maybe most importantly, how are we supposed to read the “law codes” in the Bible?

Transcript: https://theancientbridge.com/2023/06/episode-171-the-study-series-16-the-torah-the-sermons-and-the-problem-with-epistles/

YouTube: https://youtu.be/c0yX5u1iclg

Episode 170: Why Gender and Identity Confusion Are All YOUR Fault…and Mine Too.

Last summer, I did a series on my kids show about gender identity issues and I wrote this at that time to help adults understand how it is absolutely not the kids or just the liberal media who have created this problem—we’ve been just as bad and even worse as believers. How can that be? What can we do? This week we are going to explore just that. There is an extensive book list on this issue at the end of my transcript.

My series for kids can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu85aHCKqEA&list=PLyGci9v9u1suH86q2pBxL3jL5pmfiuR0m

Transcript: https://theancientbridge.com/2023/05/episode-170-why-gender-and-identity-confusion-are-all-your-faultand-mine-too/

Episode 169: The Study Series 15—Wisdom literature, Poetry, Parables, and Allegories

Alonso Schökel once said that “what has been written with imagination must be read with imagination,” and although we completely understand the difference between reading one of Shakespeare’s sonnets and Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, we tend not to do that with Biblical poetry, which makes up roughly a third of the Hebrew Scriptures. We have the same problem when we don’t understand the original purpose of wisdom literature in general, and parables and allegories. Learning how to read these will revolutionize your Bible studies.

Transcript: https://theancientbridge.com/2023/04/episode-169-the-study-series-15-wisdom-literature-poetry-parables-and-allegories/

Episode 168: The Study Series 14—Apocalyptic Literature vs Prophecy vs Historical Narratives

We’re going to look at Daniel, Revelation, and Enoch within the context of post-exilic Israel to find out what an apocalypse is, what it isn’t, and how the original audience would have read it. We’ll also cover what the Prophets are and are not, as well as historical narratives and how getting these confused with Apocalyptic writings make the popular books on Revelation not even worth the paper they are printed on.

Transcript: https://theancientbridge.com/2023/04/episode-168-the-study-series-14-apocalyptic-literature-vs-prophecy-vs-historical-narratives/

Episode 167: Study Series 13—Your Bible is an Interpretation

Translation isn’t an exact science and there is no “one true interpretation”—not in any language. Translators have to look at words in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and then make hard choices about which word in their own language would be the best substitute. And not every word can be translated easily—some can’t be translated at all because the original meaning of the word was lost. Also, sometimes Paul simply seems to have made up words by putting two actual words together. Words like dayenu, shema, ubuntu, and many others throughout the world cannot be translated without using a whole sentence or phrase. In addition, when the Bible was first written down, there were no vowel points in Hebrew and there were no spaces between words in Greek—who the heck thought that was a good idea anyway?

Transcript: https://theancientbridge.com/2023/04/episode-167-study-series-13-your-bible-is-an-interpretation/

Episode 166: The Study Series 12—The Speaker, Audience and Context of Verses

If you have ever sent me a question asking me about such and such, I will almost always ask you for the book, chapter and verse. Not because I don’t know my Bible, but because I respect it enough not to lean on the Holy Spirit to teach me something out of context. Who a section of Scripture is addressed to is just important as who the speaker is, what situation is being addressed, the genre type, and what the historical reality is. When we don’t know these things, we can turn the Bible into a cherry-picker’s idea of paradise where anything can mean whatever we want it to mean.

Transcript: https://theancientbridge.com/2023/03/episode-166-the-study-series-12-the-speaker-audience-and-context-of-verses/

Episode 165: Study 11—Binding the “Strong’s” Man: How Not to Use a Concordance

One of the most misunderstood and definitely the most misused Bible study aid is Strong’s Concordance. Today we’re going to find out what the problem is, what a Concordance is and isn’t and what it should and shouldn’t be used for. Warning: this lesson will likely make you wince at a lot of YouTube sermons.

Transcript: https://theancientbridge.com/2023/03/episode-165-study-11-binding-the-strongs-man-how-not-to-use-a-concordance/