Jared Matthews > Recent Status Updates

Liked the dynamics of Batman being on the other side of this conspiracy. Excited to see them team up in the next issue.

Great first issue. Interested to see where things go from here. The three protagonists work so well together, all being gritty detectives that rest upon the writing of Dennis O’Neil.

Great first chapter laying out the importance of love for this subject and showing the people that lay behind the “debate”. Very similar to his book on homosexuality, “People to be Loved”.

Book 3 is set in 1941 with the question as a private investigator. This feels like the role that he was always built to fill, so it was cool to see him there.

It really began tying together all the different storylines and clearing up some of the big picture questions.

The western arc in book two took me off guard. I have no idea what’s going on in the big picture, but I’m loving every second of it.

I’m starting to think that this miniseries is going to require a second read to understand it.

The wide format is a great change of pace as well. I don’t think I would like it as part of a recurring series, but it’s great for a miniseries like these black label ones.

The bit about the policeman killing the black kid is a good attempt to pull in some cultural relevance, so I’m excited to see what they do with that.

I love the conspiracy detective version of The Question too.

So cool that they got Denys Cowan to do the art for this. It manages to have the same retro feel of The Question Vol. 1, while feeling a lot newer, darker, and grittier.

The question has been definitively Rorschached, and I love every part of it.

The Rorschach reference was cool, but sucks they had to spoil it. I’m excited to see Green Arrow and the question together.

The opening issue is one of the best issues I have read of the Question. Deals with themes of racism and religion and morality. The end is done super well.

Dennis O’Neal is quickly becoming one of my favorite comic writers. The question is a noir detective in superhero garb: a recipe for success. His origin story and history adds to the lore to make a gritty and brooding detective. A nice change of pace from a lot of the “cosmic” superheroes that get the spotlight.

The flashbacks are so good. Such clever story writing. I love the golden era heroes facing off against the Earth-one heroes. Reminds me a lot of the super friends cartoons I watched as a kid.

Issue #2 did a great job recapping Crisis on Infinite Earths and some of the preludes, such that even though I have not read those comics, I felt the impact of them. This really is just expert storytelling so far. Geoff John’s is a genius.

My first crisis. Issue #1 did a good job of laying the groundwork and summarizing all of the preludes to IC. The trinity is fractured, for good reason. Geoff Johns and team did a great job coming up with compelling reasons for the group to be in turmoil.

The star-studded villains aren’t pulling punches either. I’m excited to see what the rest of Infinite Crisis holds.

Engaging with 1 Tim, Sprinkle clarifies the meaning of αὐθεντεῖν, directly engageing with the primary sources. No small task for a book aimed at the layman! He concludes that αὐθεντεῖν indicates a secular authority represented by masters and slaves, not godly leaders.

He also argues tentatively that the opposition in Ephesus is the cult of Artemis, which can explain certain features in 1 Tim.

Chapter 9 properly navigated the technical issues surrounding 1 Cor 14. It did a good job of surveying the various interpretations and giving a fair critique of each. His conclusion is well argued and is one of the only options that makes good sense of it’s place in the chapter. His conclusion is similar to that found in Ben Witherington III’s commentary, where I first read it.

Sprinkle’s understanding of 1 Cor 11 is as persuasive as you can get for such a notoriously difficult passage. He goes with a somewhat complementarian understanding of verses 7-10 but sees 11-12 as modifying his previous statements with a new-creation perspective.

He concludes that, “Verses 7-10 represent an old-creation reality, while verses 11-12 represent the inbreaking of new-creation realities.”

Inspired by Lee-Barnwell’s article, chapter 7 persuasively argues that Eph 5 turns κέφαλε on its head, that is, Paul describes the function of the husbands “headship” in terms that radically reverses the cultural expection of what it meant to be “the head” over “the body”.

Chap 5 explains the scholarly debates surrounding Rom 16:7 such that a lay-person could understand. This is no small feat if you are aware of the complexity and relevant literature on the subject.

It is also one of the best refutations of Burer’s 2015 article, which has not been received attention by the majority of the scholars that addressed his 2002 article (due to the long time it took for him to publish).

Chapter 4 takes cues from Jesus in Mark 10, arguing that we must understand leadership in a Christian way before we seek to find women as leaders in the NT.

For Jesus, greater is “the one who serves” than “the one who is at the table”. Leadership is primarily identified by service, not hierarchical dominance. Significantly, women are identified by Paul with the same terminology of service as male leaders.

Chapter 3 sidesteps anachronistically reading the gospels through the lens of the egalitarian-complementation debate, recognizing that it is more or less uninterested in our question.

However, Sprinkle makes the unique insights that women are portrayed as “ideal disciples” in the gospels, embodying what Jesus’ defined as the traits of a leader (service), in direct contrast to men, even the twelve.

Preston’s second of two chapters on the Old Testament is an overview of the role that women played in Israel, without spending too much time getting into the weeds.

He spends some time on Deborah and Huldah, among other influential women, explaining that they had some kind of leadership role over men. The bible does not present this as wrong but actually contrasts them with men who fail to act righteously.

Sprinkle’s assessment of Genesis 1-3 was rather unremarkable… as it should be. Genesis teaches little that is binding for the women in leadership debate and many who draw hard conclusions from this chapter do so by assuming what they are seeking to prove.

Preston has a gift at summarizing massive scholarly debates such that any layperson could understand the discussion. This chapter is a great example of this.

Barr spends chap five speaking about English translations, primarily gender-inclusivity, and showing that it is not a capitulation to culture, but has a history far before feminism.

I’m disappointed that she only gave brief mention to Romans 16, which has often been translated to obscure the existence of female leaders. Eldon Jay Epp’s, Junia: First Female Apostle, is key reading that I wish she had drawn on.