Jonathan Lichtenwalter

The scriptural narrative of the promised land that Israel would come to inhabit included two different streams of thought: one of total separation from the surrounding nations, and another that recognized a possibility for inclusion. Deuteronomy and Joshua include commands of a fierce and unyielding separation from the nations that Israel would come to inhabit. […]

As I’ve gone down the road to becoming an apologist, a defender of the Christian faith, it has been a thrilling adventure, at times disturbing and at times very exciting. I had always felt a call towards defending the Christian faith, ever since my early days of becoming a Christian. It seemed to me that […]

If you’ve read my previous articles on Satan and the Spiritual Realm, you may have found them interesting, but you may also be a little perplexed wondering, “What are we to take from all this?” Here is a brief summary of the scholarly information I presented: The snake of Genesis 3 most likely would not […]

In a previous article, I laid out some of the information we find about Satan in the Old Testament. We looked at the serpent in Genesis 3, in the book of Job, and elsewhere in the Old Testament. In this part, we will look at the information in apocryphal literature, which we do not consider […]

In recent scholarship, the traditional Christian interpretation of Satan has come under some scrutiny. Scholars like Dr. Michael Heiser, Dr. Miryam Braynd, and Dr. Archie Wright have focused on the development of the Satan character throughout biblical literature. Much of this scholarship has been helpful and enlightening, but the data presented can make the Satan […]

The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible by Michael S. Heiser is an excellent book that is a challenge to many of our presuppositions of what Scripture says about the unseen, spiritual world. In the first chapter of the book, Heiser points out a watershed moment in which his friend told him […]

“We don’t realize the extent to which our framework for thinking about the Bible and violence (among other topics) is culturally determined.” – John Goldingay In this article, I will discuss one of the most controversial and heavily debated subjects in the Bible: the Israelite conquest. The most pertinent questions regarding the Israelite conquest of […]

“[The Israelites] sacrificed their sons and their daughters to false gods. They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood. They defiled themselves by what they did; by their deeds they prostituted themselves” (Psalm 106:37-39, emphasis mine). […]