Tune and Prepare!

by Andrew Wilson 8 divine names Hebrew terms for God appear across the Old Testament. The prophet Isaiah brings them all together. If you were a child of Christian parents in the 1980s or 1990s, there is a decent chance that at some point you memorized the Hebrew names for God. Like Jehovah Jireh, which means “the Lord will provide” (Gen. 22:14). Or Jehovah Rapha: “The Lord heals” (Ex. 15:26). Or Jehovah Nissi: “The Lord is my banner” (17:15). There are eight such names altogether. (Besides the examples from Genesis and Exodus, they appear in Leviticus 20:8, Judges 6:24, Psalm 23:1, Jeremiah 23:6, and Ezekiel 48:35.) Learning these names—and in my case singing songs about them (with gradually accelerating Jewish melodies)—was just something we all did. Ever since, I have been unable to read the passages where Scripture introduces them without thinking of the names themselves, the songs they inspired, and the stories that gave them meaning. Clearly they made qu...

Andrew Wilson Anyone who has ever read the Gospels will have wondered how to square Jesus's language and style in John with his language and style in the Synoptics. Did Jesus talk — to his disciples, his opponents and his Father — like he does in John, or like he does in Mark? There are obvious points of overlap, not least the shared miracle stories, the passion and resurrection narratives, the emphatic speech ("truly, truly"), and the so-called "Johannine thunderbolt" of Matthew 11:25-30. And there are numerous contextual factors that account for some of the change of style. The Synoptics have a different focus to John when it comes to geography (Sea of Galilee vs Jerusalem), timing (all year round vs major festivals), mood (support vs opposition) and audience (generic crowds vs specific individuals), all of which would naturally affect the choice of words and the structure of conversations. But even so, there remains a marked difference between the wa...