Werner VorstmanInstruments for reading Scripture closely
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Articles

Notes on what the instruments turn up, and on how they work. Everything here is meant to be checkable: where a claim rests on a measurement, the measurement is named.

israeloriginal languagesworked example

How God takes back a people he sent away

A common argument makes Calvary the legal mechanism that removes the prohibition of Deuteronomy 24. Tested against the original text it fails at four points — and Jeremiah raises the question himself, centuries earlier, and answers it.

methodcross-references

What a cross-reference actually claims

The column of references in the margin of a study Bible is not a measurement of the text. It is a record of what readers have judged, and it is worth more once you know that.

septuagintworked example

Sitting at the right hand — how Hebrews quotes Psalm 110

A Hebrew psalm and a Greek letter cannot be compared word by word. Put the Septuagint between them and the quotation becomes visible at the level of the original.

calendarmethod

Counting from the new moon, and where Passover lands

Whether the month opens at the conjunction or at the first visible crescent moves every appointed day by a day or two. Here is what the arithmetic says over four thousand years.