This year’s Biblical Horizons conference was another great success and we would like to thank all those who were involved by helping out with the catering or opening up their homes to attendees and speakers.
The talks, open-ended as they were, offered a fresh perspective and food for thought on the topics they covered.
Jeff Meyers’s three lectures centered on the theme of wealth and poverty in Luke and Acts. He showed that the old world temple was the locus of Israel’s failed economic leadership and that the economic transactions of the Jewish leaders manifested their failure to use the wealth committed to their charge in the service of the priestly nation.
While acknowledging that Luke and Acts contain wisdom that is applicable to rich individuals, Jeff discouraged a “Marxist” interpretation of these books by emphasizing the fact that nobody is excluded from Jesus’ love – whether a wealthy centurion (Luke 7:9) or a poor widow (Luke 20:3-4).
Revelation – more specifically Revelation 17-21 – was the subject of Peter Leithart’s talks this year. He talked through the chiastic structures in these passages, and explained the meaning behind the imagery of the different beasts (which provoked plenty of discussion about what exactly is meant by the leopardy period!), the harlot, and the New Jerusalem. The Q&A sessions clarified the seemingly confusing jumps in time from 70 AD to the millennium to final state.
Jim Jordan chose to talk about the book of Joshua this year. Again, the importance of the chiasms in the book were examined (as well as the chiasm of the Hexateuch from Abraham to Joshua), but Jim also explained how the structure of Joshua relates to the seven days of creation in Genesis.
He then took attendees on a whistle stop tour of the whole book, where they learned how some of the gripes first voiced in Joshua would go on to shape Israel’s history in the future (Ephraim’s complaints about the land they were allotted, for example, or Gibeon’s deception of the Israelites which led to their destruction by conversion).
The significance of stones in Joshua was another topic covered – circumcision by stone, hearts of stone, God as the Rock, people as living stones, the stone altar and stones as monuments all making an appearance in the book.
Shorter sessions were given by Rich Bledsoe, who spoke on the current state of American psychiatric care from a biblical perspective, and Uri Brito on the history and future of nouthetic counseling.
We hope that everyone who came along enjoyed the week as much as we did and that you’ll come again and bring a buddy next year!
Abi Kay is Government and Parliamentary Affairs Adviser at the National Farmers’ Union in London, and a summer intern at Theopolis.