Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Genesis 1:27 In an ever-increasing barrage of self-obsession and tailor-made realities, how does the Christian navigate the waters of being someone who experiences life in the first person…
American church music is in a slump. To get out of the slump, we need a 10-year plan, a 50-year plan, and a 100-year plan. Many are doing extraordinary work on reforming church music in the near-term, and a few in the mid-term. What is desperately needed is the 100-year…
The following is an excerpt from The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics ¸ by Jerry Bowyer (New York, Fidelis Books, Post Hill Press, 2020), release date Sept. 15 th . The section below argues that the ‘Rich Man’ in the parable refers…
Could Absalom be a Christ-type? If you know much about the Bible, you likely have an immediate aversion to even the possibility of answering this question in the affirmative. Absalom was third among David’s sons, while Amnon—his brother from another mother—was first (2 Sam. 3:2-3). As Absalom’s story begins, it…
All four Gospels not only associate Barabbas and Jesus quite unabashedly, they do so emphatically and with a deep theological message. The scene is well-known. In His trial before Pontius Pilate, though Jesus had been declared innocent more than once, there seemed to be no hope of releasing Him. Pilate…
The Theopolis Institute is pleased to announce the second round of the James B. Jordan Prize to honor outstanding doctoral dissertations in biblical theology. James Jordan is one of the most insightful biblical scholars of our time. The Jordan Prize exists to encourage more of the deep Scriptural investigation of…
Showing page 63 of 309
Showing page 17 of 43
Students of Ancient Near Eastern religions and cultures have typically assumed that the peoples of the ANE operated, like ancient Israelites, with a dichotomy of holy and profane. Beate Pongratz-Leisten doubts this, both for Mesopotamia and for Israel. The notion that this dichotomy is a universal religious structures goes back…
K. van der Toorn has a 1989 article summarizing the purity system of ancient Mesopotamia. He describes purity rules as a form of temple etiquette. What makes something unclean is not that it is immoral but that it is displeasing in a particular setting, in this case displeasing before the…
Rivka and Moshe Ulmer summarize rabbinic teaching about charitable giving in Righteous Giving to the Poor . The book includes an overview of rabbinic literature in general before it gets to its main topic. Rich in quotation, the section on tzedakah examines the theological underpinnings of charity, the this- and…
Lida V. Nedilsky’s Converts to Civil Society is a sociological study of civil society in contemporary Hong Kong. But the use of the religious term “convert” is not accidental. Nedilsky argues that Christian conversion in Hong Kong opens up possibilities for other forms of voluntary association, both religious and non-religious.…
Ole Bjerg ( Making Money ) doesn’t believe the classic “commodity” accounts of the rise of money, found in both Adam Smith and Marx. Both posit an original barter economy that is made more efficient by the introduction of a commodity that is used as a medium of exchange. Bjerg…
Gerd Theissen’s contribution to The Depth of the Human Person sharply challenges mainstream views of Paul’s anthropology. It’s not that Paul’s theory is holistic rather than dualistic. That assumption is based on a faulty understanding of ancient anthropology. A holistic anthropology doesn’t necessarily imply a positive view of the body,…
Showing page 564 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
