Larry Helyer's Blog

Dear reader of this blog,



Baruch haba (welcome) to Musings from Mount Zion! Joyce and I hope you will enjoy our observations coming to you from the campus of Jerusalem University College located on historic Mount Zion, Jerusalem, Israel. We lived in Israel for a year back in 1968-69, when we were students at what was then called The American Institute of Holy Land Studies, but now JUC. I have since led tour groups and made short visits to Israel, but the last time was back in 1995. Much has changed, I'm sure, and some of these changes will probably be part of my "musings."



I will be a visiting professor at JUC during the fall semester and will teach a course called "Prophetic Landscapes in Ancient Israel." This course consists of a selection of passages taken from several OT prophets such as Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. These texts will be examined in their historical contexts, one of the important dimensions being the geographical and cultural setting. Living in the Land of the Bible is a wonderful opportunity to help students appreciate how much the topography and terrain of the land, its flora and fauna, its climate and crops, have necessarily influenced both the prophet and his prophecy. Of course, the literary and theological dimensions of this Spirit-inspired preaching will not be ignored.



As the semester progresses, I suspect you will "overhear" many conversations prompted by inquiring students listening to these ancient voices from the past. The prophets' messages, to be sure, have aspects and features that reflect a quite different time and place than our own frenetic 21st century. They contain passages that, like Simeon Peter said about Paul's letters, have "some things in them hard to understand" (2 Pet 3:16). But readers with an "ear to hear" will also most assuredly discern a word from the living God, a word transcending time and place.



Once again, welcome to our website. Shalom!