The four cubits podcast has always been about taking seriously both our ancient Bible and our modern lives, even when doing so leads us away from easy, neat answers. Often, that approach will lead us towards personal and communal change - and despite what you might have heard from some Christians, theres nothing more biblical than change! This epis…

An image from the non-violent Civil Rights protests of 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama (USA). I am coming to feel that people of ill-will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good…

We're back! This is the Sunday morning talk that I would have given in church this morning, if we weren't all locked down trying to squash what's left of COVID-19 in Scotland. My wife and I prepared this together, and the subject - how do we connect with God? - has been on our minds for quite some time now. When a young friend posed the eponymous q…

When the gospel texts converge and diverge in their retellings of the Jesus story, it can be tempting to gloss over what makes each gospel text unique. Nathan Kitchen takes us through some examples to help us read the details better. As well as nerding out on synoptic studies, we also had a great conversation about sacred time and space, and what p…

I got started on this week's episode... and I didn't finish it. But the Leviticus segment, sparked by a note in the Jewish Study Bible, was too interesting to leave in the archives. So this minicast is a look at the tum'ah - the uncleanness - of Leviticus 12-15, from a different perspective than the one usually taken in both Jewish and Christian co…

What do Christians do with Leviticus? That's what Kameron Mazurek and I are talking about this week, and it mostly involves paying closer attention to Jewish interpretation and tradition. Jesus lived near the end of an era in Jewish history, and it's that time period that we're looking to for wisdom. Transcript coming soon! Read more »…

So many of our reading skills depend on our cultural background: the memes, metaphors, and idioms that make up our literary vernacular. This week, Jo Kitchen and I take on 1 Corinthians 6, which turns out to be particularly densely packed and full of rhetorical flair. Read transcript Read more »By Dan Abson

Psalm 81 features a classic, biblical counter-narrative. I leave it as a bit of an open question, so plenty to get stuck into here. This was fun to talk about for a few minutes last week, but I cut it for time because on account of how cool Psalm 82 is. I'm a bit behind on editing, so this week's conversation with Jo Kitchen will be along in a day …

Psalm 82 and Mark 12 took me in unexpected directions this week. I hope that you find it as thought-provoking, challenging, and inspiring as I did. Transcript coming soon! Read more »By Dan Abson

I had a lovely Sunday afternoon catching up with old friends in Wardley again, and this is the talk I gave at the eucharist service. I picked up on the threads of the Romans 12 segment from last week's podcast, cheerfully stealing Nat's comments as well as expanding on mine. The subject of renewal and transformation of mind/spirit as Christian is a…

The plague narrative is our jumping-off point for the epic that is Exodus, as our friend Nat Ritmeyer returns to 4QS to talk about how (and how not) to read it. We spend our time discussing how to let Exodus be Exodus, and not bring its towering theology crashing back down to a mundane level. There's just some much story to explore. Transcript comi…

A quick flashback this week, in lieu of a full-length episode, to a very brief mention a few weeks ago of the pastoral epistles. I promised a minicast giving an overview of the question of who wrote the letters to Timothy and Titus, and here it is. Many biblical scholars have good reasons to think it wasn't Paul, and there are reasons to pay close …

Well, this week's episode started out as a short look at Genesis 22 and the Binding of Isaac, known in Jewish tradition as the "Akedah" ("binding", from Genesis 22:9). It kind of grew legs, though, and it turns out to be an incredible passage to talk about some really important stuff when it comes to biblical narrative and interpretation. Transcrip…

Happy new year from myself and Becky Lewis, my first co-host on four cubits in 2020! The Genesis segment comes to you in a slightly different format this week: Genesis 9 is Becky's jumping-off point for an overview of the themes in the whole book. It works really well as a reader's guide to the book, which will be very helpful as we read through it…

Looking at how a biblical text is written can help us focus on the right things when we're reading it. That's what we're looking at in Nehemiah and 2 Timothy this week: how the message is proclaimed and why it matters. On the other hand there's also Amos, who takes a prophetic flamethrower to his people in a scathing indictment of a religious piety…

We're back with Nehemiah this week, one of my favourite Bible characters. He's an early governor of post-exilic Jerusalem, but here we see him exercising his prophetic voice. After a few minutes in Hosea to look at the theme of reversal we dive into an extended NT segment in Acts, where the narrative is in transition to the final act of the book's …

The prophets in the Hebrew Bible urge the people of God to resist empire, but maybe they also confront their own community's traditions in search of better ways of worshiping and knowing God. In Ezra and Hosea this week, we're encouraged to see resistance as a mechanism of active change - and the prophets are nothing if not agents of change. Don't …

Just one passage this week, as I've been busy working with the writer of a new blog series, One Woman's Journey: A Call to Reflect, which I'm really excited to host here on the four cubits and a span blog. If you haven't read part 1 yet, you should definitely go and read it right now. On the podcast this week, we're looking at the final chapter of …

Some people like to say that Bible-believing Christians should not be political: but that's a difficult proposition when the Bible itself contains such deeply political texts. All three readings this week make striking political statements, so we're looking at how the inspired writers bring the lens of the past to bear on the present for the people…

Monday's episode on 2 Chronicles 12-13 was notably missing any content from 2 Chronicles 13. Well here it is! A few minutes on Abijah/Abijam, son of Rehoboam king of Judah, who gets a post-exilic, Braveheart makeover by the Chronicler. It's epic, y'all. Don't forget, you can now register for the Living Faith Study Day 2019 on EventBrite! It's a gat…

This week, each passage is a reframing a familiar, biblical narrative for a different moment in time. We consider how the Chronicler retells an Egyptian invasion of Judah; how Ezekiel recounts a vision of an Israel united under very different terms; and how the Evangelist in the gospel of John recasts the return of Jesus, the kingdom of God, and pr…

four cubits and a span is back! Jo Kitchen returns to co-host this episode, and we take a look at three passages that make us ask all of the most interesting questions that the Bible invites us to consider. (Spoiler alert: they all start with "Why...?") This new season of the podcast kicks off with the bloodless, U-rated version of Solomon's access…

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. - Dr Martin Luther King, Jr (after Theodore Parker). 1964, Middletown, Connecticut. Something a little different this week! In an essay in 1853, Theodore Parker set up ideas on social responsibility, justice, conscience, and the nature of God reflected in human beings that still r…

We're back with a summer hiatus special episode! I was delighted to invite my friend Jo Kitchen to re-record with me a segment on the second half of Deuteronomy 22. We look at how ancient patriarchal norms framed laws on sex and marriage, and how we can read scripture seriously today when we find in its pages the same attitudes that drive modern-da…

This week's episode opens up a conversation about the ethical implications of divinely-mandated violence and genocide in the conquest narrative in Joshua, and the real world danger of a superficial, white European reading of the text. Read transcript Read more »By Dan Abson

There's an extended Joshua segment today, as we face up to the different versions of the conquest of Canaan presented throughout Joshua and Judges. To help us start framing the right questions to ask of the Bible - like, "Why there are multiple accounts in the first place?" - we go looking for help from archaeology. Read transcript Read more »…

In the Joshua 3-4 segment there are some crucial issues to consider that help to frame this pivotal episode in early Israelite narrative history: entering the land of Canaan. The Isaiah passage on the other hand is pivotal to Christians, but the whole story in that passage is central to the meaning of the most quotable verse. In the New Testament, …

This week's episode is super-late because I've been ill, but here it is anyway. There's plenty of material in this week's readings to make everybody uncomfortable, and that's without the stuff that I cut for length. Sometimes the Bible does that. Read transcript Read more »By Dan Abson

This week on the podcast we're returning to the seventh-year remission laws from last month, and the fascinating character (and book) of Koheleth from last year. We're also facing up to one of the rare "texts of terror" in the New Testament: the execution of Ananias and Sapphira. Read transcript Read more »…

What happened at Sinai? This question faces us throughout the Deuteronomy narrative, and this week is our introduction to the Deuteronomist's retelling of the Exodus tradition. In John's gospel we're facing another perspective on John's Christology and theology - what are we to make of the Comforter passage? Read transcript Read more »…

What was the route of the exodus journey, and why does it matter? Can we really learn profound lessons about the Bible by reading a list of place names? (Spoiler alert: we can.) We move away from pithy one-versers in Proverbs, and take on the Jesus/cannibalism sayings in John. Read transcript Read more »…

So what happens when the reality of the biblical text crashes against our expectations of biblical reality? We're taking that head-on in the Numbers passage this week, as we consider the choice: explain away the biblical text, or change our perspecive on it. Perhaps Proverbs can help us properly frame our search for wisdom in the Bible. Read transc…

Challenging texts this week, and three important conversations to hold. In Numbers, God is planning genocide again - and we have to ask ourselves whether or not God changes his mind, and how we read scriptures describing God's words and actions. The tables are turned on the reader in the New Testament, as we are forced to turn those same questions …

Lady Wisdom and Madam Folly are introduced at the start of Proverbs, and it's appropriate as we look for wisdom in the Law and the Gospel this week. It's hard to know where to go with either, but there are some story anchors that we can drop to get started. Read transcript Read more »By Dan Abson

In spite of the dreadful audio quality in this episode (sorry about that) I really got sucked into the texts this week. The release and jubilee laws in Leviticus, which are cautiously liberative, are closely connected to the land of promise itself - both textually and historically; and in the New Testament, a synoptic study of an account in Luke re…

Three quite different passages this week: a list of sexual "don't"s in Leviticus; part of the astonishing Psalm 119 that puts humanity and God only a Torah's-breadth apart; and the question of whether or not the author of Luke-Acts positioned themselves as an historian (spoiler: they didn't). Running through this episode, though, is a similar range…

The Leviticus segment for the next two weekly episodes takes us into the Holiness Code, a text that is quite distinct from the rest of the Priestly material in Torah. In this minicast we take a look at what sets it apart, and how that helps us to read these chapters. Read transcript Read more »By Dan Abson

How do we read and study the Bible? How hard should we work to pin down the meaning of every last detail, and is that even possible? This is where our thoughts are drifting in this episode, especially in Leviticus 8 and in a spot of light textual criticism in 1 Corinthians 16. Listen in and be prepared to let go of some certainty in exchange for a …

Sometimes the Bible is obscure and esoteric to us, and relies on knowledge that was bound to its culture of origin, as in the instructions for robing the priests in Exodus - and that's OK. Sometimes, we indulge in interpretations that are obscure and esoteric, which rely on the transitory circumstances in our own culture, and we appropriate biblica…

As promised a few weeks ago, we're reading Jesus walking on the water alongside Psalm 89 and asking what it means for a human being to exercise the authority of God. Read transcript Read more »By Dan Abson

Bit of a different format this week, as we spend (almost) the entire, shorter episode on Romans 13. If we put ourselves in the shoes of an oppressed and colonised people, we find a very different perspective on government emerge from this text than the one typically heard in affluent, Western democracies. Guided by Sung Uk Lim's 2015 paper, A doubl…

Redemption for all people in all places is a thread that runs from the Korahite Psalms (such as today's Psalm 49), through the centuries, to the writing of the apostle Paul (as in Romans 1-3). Two spectacular, inspirational texts to look at there this week. There's even a hint of the sentiment in Joseph's actions in Genesis 44, which brings the Jos…

It was supposed to be a few minutes of source criticism; it turned into a minicast; now it's a full special episode! After the minicast on the composition of Torah a couple of weeks ago, I'm testing the source critical approach on the stories of Rebekah, Isaac, and Ishmael: how does the approach work in practice, and does it really add anything use…

It's a big four cubits welcome back to last-minute co-host Nat Ritmeyer for the Psalms segment this week, as we dive back into the theology of Iron Age Israel through its poetry. We also have a shorter Genesis segment (stay tuned for more of Rebekah's story next week), and in Matthew we're looking again at the evangelist's use of material from Mark…

Happy new first full podcast of the new year! We dive right in with the iconic Babel story, which reaches forwards and backwards across the narrative of early Genesis, and seems written to resonate particularly with exile-era Israel. Add to that a few psalms, and Jesus as Lord and servant in Matthew's gospel, and we're off! Read transcript Read mor…

OK, so I did an intro to the book of Psalms while recording episode #45, and... well, you can probably guess. So here it is in minicast #2! Psalms might have an even more interesting textual history than Torah, but we'll almost certainly never be able to figure it out. What we can do is bear it in mind as we read and interpret the Psalms - both ind…

As we prepare to get stuck into Torah in 2019, here's the first 4QS minicast! It's a brief introduction to source critical theories of composition, particularly focusing on the modern form of the Documentary Hypothesis. I also give a quick intro to other composition theories, and discuss the important question: why does it matter? Read transcript R…

And we're back, with thanks to my friend Jessica for being the podcast's first live-in-person co-host! This week we go to Job, Malachi, and Revelation to talk about biblical literature, history, mythical creatures, and the end of the world. Read transcript Read more »By Dan Abson

Mercy is a recurring theme in today's readings, both its lack and its abundance. Maybe the extent to which we show mercy depends to a large extent on what we believe about God, and God's character. We explore that theme in this episode, through Zophar, Micah, and James. Read transcript Read more »By Dan Abson

An extended segment on Job dives into the curious framing narrative that opens the book. With a heightened sense of reality and a gathering of divine beings, what's really going on here - and what part does it really play in the drama of Job? A similar, literary look at the middle of the Jonah narrative gives way to a consideration of what modern p…