Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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In his study of The Concept of Purity at Qumran and in the Letters of Paul , Michael Newton argues that Paul transfers the logic and patterns of purity and cult from the temple to the new temple-community, the church. Relying mainly on Corinthians, Newton writes: “By describing the Christian…
A hermeneutical rule of thumb I share with students: Chapter 2 comes after chapter 1. It has many applications, as in “Chapter 18 comes after chapter 17.” Make the observation, then ask, Why? Why is that story there , after this one and before that one? The story of Sodom…
After describing the heroes of faith from creation to Jericho with some leisure, Hebrews 11 closes with a rapid-fire survey of everything from the judges on (vv. 32-38). It's a nicely constructed passage. First, six individuals are named, followed by a general reference to “prophets”: Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David,…
In a 1991 article in the Tyndale Bulletin , Edwin Judge reviews the symbolic resonances of the phrase “mark of the beast,” but notes, rightly that “the visions of Revelation keep disconcertingly coming down to earth” (158). So he looks for historical evidence of a mark imposed by Roman authorities…
In an essay on atonement in the Jewish Studies Quarterly from the early 1990s, Mary Douglas explains “the social origins of ideas about defilement in general”: Living in a community, people find themselves wanting to keep apart from some dissimilar others and to be included within sets of similars. To…
“The ambition of the liberal political philosopher,” writes Paul Kahn ( Putting Liberalism in its Place , 120), is to find that set of arguments that is so compelling that every individual, not corrupted by the illogic of interest, would necessarily affirm those reasons as his own.” Because it assumes…
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