Recent news from the MIddle East is worrisome. What kind of government will Egypt end up with? How unfriendly might that government be toward the United States and Israel? When will Iran succeed in building nuclear weapons? What will happen to the Christians in Iraq, who are suffering serious persecution?
In times like these it helps to be reminded that God is in ultimate control of the situation. Such a reminder was posted on Feb 15 at Zondervan's Koinonia blog, where Christian Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser presented some thoughts on Isaiah 19, a prophecy about Egypt.
This chapter ends with encouraging words about the eventual relationship between Egypt, Israel, Assyria and God:
In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance." (Isa 19:23-25, NIV)
Kaiser has elsewhere described the fulfillment of prophecies like this one as a sort of process that extends from the...
I've finally finished my report on the lecture Walter Kaiser gave at Miami University back in March. (See the March 29 entry.) It was a very enjoyable project, but I got carried away. The print version of the article is 14 pages long, and there are 37 footnotes. Who is actually going to read this monstrosity?
In his lecture, Kaiser briefly mentioned some important archaeological finds from each period of biblical history. During the lecture I scratched down the list, with the idea that I would look up each one afterwards.
As it turned out, each discovery had its own interesting story. I made heavy use of my Biblical Archaeology Review CD-ROM. (It contains the first 27 years of the magazine.) Most of the discoveries in the list have received extensive coverage there. I also used
Kaiser's A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age through the Jewish Wars and The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant?
the survey articles on archaeology from the Expositor's Bible Commentary.
Each year on the last Saturday night in March, there's a special lecture at Miami University, given by some noted evangelical scholar in honor of Dr. Edwin Yamauchi, a longtime history professor at Miami who retired in 2006.
The first three Yamauchi lectures were given by Darrell Bock, Richard Hess, and Craig Evans. The 2009 speaker was Old Testament scholar Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.
Kaiser was a graduate school classmate of Dr. Yamauchi's. The two of them (along with Marvin Wilson, another rather well known evangelical scholar) were students of Cyrus Gordon at Brandeis in the 1960s. Kaiser retired a few years ago from his position as president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and he has been working on a number of writing projects since then.
Dr. Kaiser is, among other things, the editor of the NIV Archaeological Study Bible, and his lecture was an overview of biblical archaeology, highlighting some of the top discoveries from each era of biblical history. I'll post an article on the G&K website when I have a chance.
Kaiser prefaced his remarks with the story of how he persuaded a very wealthy (and extremely conservative) former student to provide $500,000 to fund the...
At Miami University spring break has come and gone. There are seven weeks of class left in the spring semester, then final exams.
One thing that I enjoy about this part of the academic year is that lots of campus lectures are typically scheduled for March and April.
This year is no exception. Garrison Keillor is coming this week, Salman Rushdie next week.
Sometimes two good lectures are scheduled at the same time. On April 2, there's going to be an AIA archaeology lecture in Oxford at 7:30 PM. At the same time, eminent Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo will be speaking on the Hamilton campus about Lincoln as a philosopher. I"m leaning toward going to the Guelzo lecture. I've seen him speak on BookTV, and he's an excellent speaker.
But the lecture i'm most looking forward to is the one by Walter Kaiser, one of my favorite Bible scholars. He'll be giving a lecture called "Archaeology and the Bible: The Top 15 Finds" on March 28.
