Houseform Apologetics

Many Christians believe the book of Job is the earliest book of the Bible, written sometime before Moses in the patriarchal era. Few Old Testament scholars assign any merit to this idea. Why the disagreement? Is there any basis for thinking Job is earlier than the time of Moses? Is there any way to know when Job was written and who might have written it? Does any point of biblical history or theology depend on the answer? We discuss all these issues in this episode of the podcast.

This episode begins a series of topical episodes following the end of our series on Leviticus. The topic for this episode is the controversial head covering reference in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15. The discussion summarizes the material discussed in a scholarly journal article published in 2004 by Dr. Troy Martin entitled, “Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15: A Testicle instead of a Head Covering” (Journal of Biblical Literature 123:1 [2004]: 75–84). Martin summarizes his approach as follows: “This article interprets Paul’s argument from nature in 1 Corinthians 11:13–15 against the background of ancient physiology. The Greek and Roman medical texts provide useful information for interpreting not only Paul’s letters but also other NT texts.” The article (and the author’s subsequent responses to criticism, also published in academic literature) presents a compelling case and is, to Dr. Heiser’s knowledge, the only approach that provides a coherent explanation...