Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Summary In what follows, I will consider the “year-stamps” employed in Scripture, i.e., statements of the form, “Such-and-such an event took place in the Xth year of Y.” In the process, I will suggest some ways in which the Biblical narrative might relate to events in the extra-Biblical world, though…
In the first essay on the parable of the Prodigal Son, I suggested that the problems commentators and others encounter in interpreting Jesus three-part parable are not accidental. These are not just problems in our ignorance of cultural background. They are intentional features of the stories —stories designed to poke…
The story of the Prodigal Son is perhaps the most well-known story in the Bible. As others have observed, it may also be one of the most misunderstood. In two short essays, I will point out features of this story that are commonly neglected, aspects of Jesus’ parable that might…
The parable of Lazarus and the nameless rich man is not an independent story. It is part of a long context that begins in Luke 15:1, where Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners and the scribes and Pharisees grumble. In response to their hardheartedness, Jesus tells a three-part…
The Bible is written so that even when a reader cannot pick up on what might be deeper or more detailed aspects of a text, there is virtually always a message to be heard. In the ancient world, where the “reader” of Scripture would likely be a church official facing…
The distinction between garden (or vineyard) and field begins in Genesis 2. This relates to the ordering of the formless world. Plants of the field are contrasted with the garden planted by God in Genesis 2:5&8. Later on, under the Old Covenant the Israelites will be required to keep their…
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Micah 3: Hear now, O heads of Jacob, and you rulers of the house of Israel: Is it not for you to know justice? You who hate good and love evil; who strip the skin from My people, and the flesh from their bones; who also eat the flesh of…
Doctrine matters, and no doctrine matters more than the doctrines concerning Jesus Christ. One of the earliest and most intense controversies in the early church had to do with Arianism. Arius taught that the Son of God was not equal to the Father, not eternal God, but only a very…
I am reading a portion of the text from 2 Corinthians 4. We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but…
In imitation of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” the Cambodian tyrant Pol Pot attempted to rationalize the inefficiencies of Cambodian agriculture. In an essay in the Black Book of Communism , Jean-Louis Margolin writes: “It was perhaps the sons of the soil who controlled operations on the ground, but their real…
In his wonderful Musicophilia , Oliver Sacks describes a patient named Martin, who suffered meningitis at the age of three and was never mentally normal afterwards. He spent hours listening to operas and by the time Sacks met him in 1984, he claimed to have more than 2000 operates memorized,…
In many cultures, music and dance go naturally together. Music moves the body, and so bodies move to the music. Not ours, or at least not in “high culture.” Patrick Shove writes, “Many twentieth-century composers focus on sound qualities or abstract tonal patterns, and performers of their compositions often neglect…
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