Peter J. Leithart

Christmas is unique. Ancient gods appeared in human form, but no other religion, ancient or modern, teaches that the Creator of heaven and earth was born of a woman, grew as an infant and toddler, and reached manhood. No other religion teaches that because no other religion wants the eternal God of . . . . Continue Reading »

Further reflections on Revelation 1:4. First, Eugene Boring emphasizes that the three participles in the name of the Father are not all from the same verb. Some Jewish texts expound on the “I am” in a similar triadic fashion, and some Hellenistic texts apply a similar temporal triad to . . . . Continue Reading »

Further reflections on the nominative in Revelation 1:4: “from he who is, was, comes.” As Michael Wilcock and others point out, John’s grammatical “error” makes a theological point: God is not subject to declension. He is always subject, never object. Remarkably, . . . . Continue Reading »

Jesus tells Nathanael that he will see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. The Son of Man is Jacob’s ladder to heaven, but when? and how? As noted in the previous post, John speaks writes of the exaltation of the Son of Man on the cross. When the Son of Man is lifted up in . . . . Continue Reading »

What makes John link the Passover prohibition of breaking bones (Exodus 12:46) with the Zechariah 12 prophecy that “they shall look on the one whom they pierced” in John 19:36-37? One of the links is Passover itself. “Not a bone shall be broken” is clearly a Passover text, . . . . Continue Reading »

Revelation 1:7 quotes and/or alludes to Daniel 7 and Zechariah 12. The usual interpretive procedure is to move from Daniel and Zechariah, through Matthew 24:30, which quotes both passages, and on to Revelation. Many commentators note in passage that John 19:37 also quotes the same piercing passage . . . . Continue Reading »

A big title for a small post. Revelation 1:4 summarizes Jesus’ work with three phrases: faithful witness, firstborn out of dead, ruler of kings of the earth. That is, He was faithful to death, rose again, and was exalted over all. Now, in the context, Cur Deus Homo ? Assume John’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Commenting on the ungrammatical nominative in the phrase “from he who is and was and comes,” Caird says, “God is, so to speak, always in the nominative, always the subject; he always holds the initiative, and things happen because he chooses, not because men force his hand and so . . . . Continue Reading »

Zechariah 12 begins with a siege of Jerusalem (12:3), but the Lord promises that He will intervene to save Judah and Jerusalem (vv. 6-9). In Zechariah 12:10-13:1: the siege has been lifted, and during this respite, the Lord promises to pour out His Spirit upon the house of David and inhabitants of . . . . Continue Reading »

Beale points out that the description of Jesus in Revelation 1:5 is drawn from Psalm 89:27-28, 37. All three phrases - firstborn, ruler of the kings of the earth, faithful witness - are found in the Psalm. One important modification of Psalm 89 is that the Jesus is not just designated as firstborn, . . . . Continue Reading »