Category Archives: Biblical History

The Two Failures of Memory That Scripture Names

Posted on July 9, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract The foregoing papers established that remembrance is a covenantal duty (Paper 1) and set out the machinery by which the covenant equips its people to keep it (Papers 2–3). This paper turns from the duty and its means to … Continue reading →

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The Material Witnesses

Posted on July 9, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract The preceding paper argued that the appointed times keep a people’s memory whole by fixing the deliverance in a recurring rite rather than leaving it to private recollection. This paper takes up the second of the covenant’s memorial provisions: … Continue reading →

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The Appointed Times as the Memorial Engine

Posted on July 9, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract If remembrance is a covenantal duty owed by a whole people across generations, as the preceding paper argued, then the covenant must supply means proportioned to the duty—means that stand outside the individual heart and outreach the individual lifetime. … Continue reading →

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The Heap of Witness: Treaties, Boundaries, and the Land That Is the LORD’s

Posted on June 21, 2026 by nathanalbright

A sermon on the binding of oaths, the bounds of nations, and the difference between keeping a word and merely saying one. Brethren, there is a river in the south of this country called the Sarstoon, and along its banks … Continue reading →

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Paper 6: The New Covenant and the Limits of Church Discipline

Posted on June 11, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract The previous papers established the limits on the believer reaching backward into Israel’s civil law. This paper addresses the structure that actually governs the new-covenant community, and shows that it is no avenue for the penal action the live … Continue reading →

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Paper 2:The Polity Requirement: Why Israel’s Civil Penalties Presupposed a Nation

Posted on June 10, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract Paper 1 showed that enforcement in Scripture runs through appointed offices rather than through the private reader. This paper presses one step further and identifies what those offices required in order to exist at all. The judge in the … Continue reading →

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A Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation

Posted on June 7, 2026 by nathanalbright

[Note:  This is the prepared text for a sermon given to the United Church of God in the Dalles, Oregon, on Sabbath, June 6, 2026.] Introduction: The Debate Over the Priesthood of Believers Few phrases in the history of Christian … Continue reading →

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The King’s Spear and the Deliverer’s Harp: Saul and David as the Scriptural Archetype

Posted on June 4, 2026 by nathanalbright

1. Why the suite begins here The phenomenon this suite examines is documented in Greek, Roman, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Soviet history, and a reader might reasonably expect a study of military history to open with one of those secular … Continue reading →

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From Failure Mode to Credibility Gap: How the Biblical Catalog of Priestly Abuse Maps the Suspicions of Fair-Minded Audiences

Posted on May 28, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This paper occupies the structural center of the present work, joining the exegetical typology of priestly abuse developed in the first suite to the rhetorical analysis of authority and its defense developed in the second. Its thesis is that … Continue reading →

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Patterns of Reckoning: A Taxonomy of Divine Judgment on Priests

Posted on May 27, 2026 by nathanalbright

Abstract This concluding paper of the suite argues that the divine judgments on priestly abuse, surveyed across the preceding seven papers, are not arbitrary or merely various but fall into a small set of recognizable forms, each keyed to the … Continue reading →

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