Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
“And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets,” Zachariah 8:5. 1. Ultimatum game Ultimatum Game is an economic experiment. Its rules are simple: I will give you $100 as long as you give part of that money to the person next…
The Nephilim of Genesis 6 has been a topic of great speculation over the centuries. The word appears in Scripture two times, first in Genesis 6 and then in Numbers 13. There have been three major theories regarding the identity of the Nephilim : The Fallen-Angel Procreation Theory: this view…
Jesus on trial was silent before all His accusers, until the high priest said to Him: “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” (Matthew 26:63) The high priest commanded Jesus to declare clearly whether or not He was the…
Introduction In many ways I have been disheartened—and at times distraught—by how congregations across America have responded to Covid19, not in the first weeks when so much was unknown, but in the months since. I had, like most everyone, originally thought we'd be at home a few weeks, but from…
The dust settled as Yahweh clapped his hands together to knock off any remaining clumps of dirt and soil. He had just finished forming from the dust of the ground the crowning glory of his creation. There, lying lifeless upon the newly created earth, was the first image in Yahweh's…
When reading the Psalms Christologically, it is one thing to see the prefigured sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. But what do we do with the passages concerning recompense, judgment, or vengeance? Are we to also read these Christologically, or are these vestigial Old Covenant ways of thinking, fit…
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Walton and Sandy ( The Lost World of Scripture ) define science as “an understanding of the material world derived from an empirical process and operating according to naturalistic premises” (50). Given that definition, it’s hardly surprising that they conclude that “the Bible’s illocutions do not offer scientific description or…
In their editorial introduction to Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions , Christian Frevel and Christophe Nihan question the common distinction between “moral” and “ritual” impurity, and the popular claim that purity rules were evolved in a “spiritualized” direction. They admit that purity means different things in different contexts,…
John sees a strong angel descending from heaven (Revelation 10:1). It’s not just an angelophany; it’s a theophany, a Christophany. That’s evident from the fact that, like the throne of God itself, his head is surrounded by the rainbow (cf. 4:3). His head is in the place where the Enthroned…
Samantha Melamed reports that young men today are no longer satisfied with a handshake: “more men are embracing, well, embracing.” Melamed writes, “The rise in hugging can be directly traced to declines in homophobia, according to Mark McCormack, a University of Durham (England) sociologist who has studied the behavior of…
“Grain and new wine” is an automatic combination throughout the Hebrew Bible (cf. e.g., Genesis 27:28, 37; Numbers 12:27; Deuteronomy 7:13; 2 Kings 18:32; 2 Chronicles 31:5; 32:28; Isaiah 62:8; Hosea 2:8). Grain ( dagan ) is almost never used without “wine,” and when it happens you know something is…
Hee Youl Lee’s A Dynamic Reading of the Holy Spirit in Revelation is a complicated monograph on the role of the Spirit in Revelation. Lee argues that the book is organized by a sixfold plot (introduction, setting, complication, resolution, evaluation, moral)_ that functions at four levels (heaven, earth, abyss, lake…
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