Studying lectionary texts? Here are some starting places for study at ATLA this week. If you are the graduate of an accredited U.S. theological school, you may have free access to these articles through your school. Check ATLAS access options. You can find full lists of ATLAS recommended articles for this week at The Text This Week's page for this week's texts.
Advent 4B
December 18, 2011
Psalm 89
- Mays, James Luther, "'In a Vision': The Portrayal of the Messiah in the Psalms," Ex Auditu, 1991.
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“It serves the purpose of the vision best if a systematic and conceptual condensation is not attempted as a conclusion. Such an abstraction easily becomes itself the subject of thought. The vision is best considered in attempted descriptions that are responses to particular texts and their literary and canonical connections. The vision is never fully in focus, never complete in some logical form. In each text it is a refraction of what the text speaks about.”
Luke 1:26-38
- Brown, Raymond E., "The Annunciation to Mary, the Visitation, and the Magnificat," Worship, 1988.
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“Following the same format he used to introduce the annunciation to Zechariah, Luke introduces this scene with notes on time, place, and the primary characters. The time (the sixth month, that is, of Elizabeth's pregnancy) helps to call the reader's attention to the relationship between the two annunciations. For the previous annunciation, the place was Jerusalem and the heritage was priestly — circumstances befitting Old Testament characters like Zechariah and Elizabeth. In this annunciation the place is Nazareth in Galilee and the heritage is Davidic — circumstances befitting gospel characters like Mary and Joseph intimately involved with Jesus, whose public ministry will be in Galileee and who is the Messiah of the house of David.”
- Borg, Marcus, "Light in the Darkness," The Christian Century, 1998.
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“The truly important questions about the birth stories are not whether Jesus was born of a virgin, or whether there was an empire-wide census that took Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, or whether there was a special star leading wise men from the East. The important questions are, ‘Is Jesus the light of the world? Is he the true Lord? Is what happened in him 'of God'?’ Answering these questions lays claim to our whole lives.”
- Smith, D. Moody, "An Exposition of Luke 1:26-38," Interpretation, 1975.
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“Is it actually easier to believe that God in that Nazarean carpenter was reconciling the world to himself? If one wants to believe in a miracle, there's one! Is it really less offensive to the assumptions and tastes of modern man that God chose to make himself known through a rejected son of a persecuted people?”
- Wright, N.T., "God's Way of Acting," The Christian Century, 1998.
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“If the first two chapters of Matthew and the first two of Luke had never existed, I do not suppose that my own Christian faith, or that of the church to which I belong, would have been very different. But since they do, and since for quite other reasons I have come to believe that the God of Israel, the world's creator, was personally and fully revealed in and as Jesus of Nazareth, I hold open my historical judgment and say: If that's what God deemed appropriate, who am I to object?”
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