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Buying Joel’s Book = Sacrifice to Goat Demons: A Pesher for Today
I was annotating Leviticus today, and the meaning of 17:7 was readily apparent. Once you understand that Joel in his multiple personalities = the goat demons, you are on your way to understanding the text: So they (people who have recently bought a book on mimetic criticism and the Gospel of Mark) shall no more…
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The Valley of Jehoshaphat
In Joel 4.12 (or 3.2 dependent on your translation), there is a reference to the “Valley of Jehoshaphat.” Here’s the comment from the The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (which if you didn’t know by now, I love): There is no valley with this name known in Israel from the Bible or from other…
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John Collins on the Day of the Lord
Today’s reading is from Joel 1 and 2. The theme of “the day of the Lord” plays prominently in the passage as well as in many other prophetic texts. I remembered reading quite a long time ago a helpful passage in Collins’ Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. It explains why all of the talk of…