Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The first commandment given in the Levitical sacrificial legislation has to do with the animals appropriate to sacrifice: "When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of cattle ( behemah ), from the herd or the flock" (Lev. 1:2). Cattle alone were…
This post was originally posted in 2004 The ultimate condemnation of a position in Reformed circles is to show that it “leads back to Rome.” Indeed, one gets the feeling that Rome is a worse destination for a Presbyterian than even hell itself. The accusation of Rome stings deeply, of…
There are countless scholars who have helped me in my reading of various passages of Scripture. I have gleaned insights and keys from them that have unlocked texts that once perplexed me. However, no scholar has done so much to teach me how to read the Scripture more generally than…
The Tortoise and the Hare is perhaps the most well-known of the Greek fables. Its story has been present in every era of human history. From the Indigenous retellings with hummingbirds and cranes to the Biblical account of David and Goliath, the basic furniture of an unlikely hero tale is…
Sexual sins are perhaps the most shame-inducing sins experienced by Christians and non-Christians alike. All sins can bring shame, but sexual sins are deeply personal and affect us in profound ways. For example, adultery leaves its victim devastated by betrayal; porn addiction leaves men feeling gross, pathetic, and lazy; losing…
If the mark of a good book is how many times a person can re-read it with pleasure, Richard Adams’ novel Watership Down is one of the best books of the 20 th century. I’ve taught this book in my middle school literature class for the past three years, and…
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Sanballat hears about Nehemiah’s project of rebuilding Jerusalem after the exile, he becomes angry and mocks the Jews: “Can they finish in a day? Can they revive the stones from the heaps of dust even the burned ones” (Nehemiah 4:2). The taunt is theologically significant. “Finish” is kalah , the…
John describes the angel’s position in Revelation 10 in great detail. The angel straddles land and sea, but for some reason John thinks it important to record that the angels right foot is on the sea and left foot on the land. Assuming that the shoreline in question is the…
Several months ago, I wrote a First Things essay on the life and ministry of Pastor Tom Clark of Tri-City Covenant Church in Somersworth, New Hampshire. Tom died shortly after that essay appeared, but during his last days we were able to spend a couple of days listening to and…
Irene Gedalof argues in Against Purity that feminists have been too much in the grip of a binary logic that actually undermines feminism. What she has in mind is the notion that women can be defined in terms of a pure category of “Woman” or “Feminine.” On the contrary, women’s…
Brian Pennington’s Was Hinduism Invented? includes a brief outline of William Ward’s 1817 treatise on the History, Literature and Religion of the Hindoos . He describes the missionary Ward as one of the “first Europeans to adopt an ethnographic stance” (79). Pennington continues: “He turned from linguistic and textual studies…
David Wootton’s TLS review of Quentin Skinner’s Forensic Shakespeare is a primer on Elizabethan law and legal rhetoric. Wootton tells us, “We tend to think rhetoric is about using figures of speech, but that was only a small part of the orator’s training, which relied both on textbooks inherited from…
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