four cubits and a span
A layperson's conversation about ancient biblical narrative in the life of the modern believer, incorporating the best of biblical scholarship. Also, stories.
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- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Episodes
- 101
- Years Active
- 2017 - 2021
A New Time: How To Be A Bible Believer In A Changing World (Episode #100)
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…
Sat 06 Mar 2021
Letter From A Birmingham Jail
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…
Thu 23 Jul 2020
What Is God Made Of? (2 Corinthians 3)
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 …
Sat 04 Jul 2020
edit (2020/03/15)
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 t…
Tue 10 Mar 2020
minicast: Tum'ah (Leviticus 12-15)
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 …
Sat 07 Mar 2020
Torah (2020/03/01)
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…
Mon 24 Feb 2020
SWALK (2020/02/23)
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 turn…
Wed 19 Feb 2020
minicast: Psalm 81
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 i…
Mon 17 Feb 2020
foundations (2020-02-16)
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. Read transcriptTranscript coming soon! Read more »
Mon 10 Feb 2020
Renewal (Romans 12)
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…
Tue 04 Feb 2020
perspective (2020/02/02)
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 le…
Tue 28 Jan 2020
minicast: Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles
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 …
Wed 15 Jan 2020
binding (2020/01/12)
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, a…
Thu 09 Jan 2020
wisdom (2020/01/05)
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 …
Wed 01 Jan 2020
proclaim (2019/11/23)
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 …
Mon 18 Nov 2019
prophet (2019/11/17)
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 H…
Mon 11 Nov 2019
resist (2019/11/10)
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…
Mon 04 Nov 2019
eschaton (2019/11/03)
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…
Mon 28 Oct 2019
politics (2019/10/27)
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…
Mon 21 Oct 2019
minicast: The Epic Story of the Great and Unmatched Wisdom of King Abija(h|m)
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, Br…
Wed 16 Oct 2019
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