Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Building of the Temple Solomon began work on the Temple in the second month of his fourth year. This was the year 2993, a sabbath year. He finished in the eighth month of his eleventh year, the year 3000, also a sabbath. (1 Ki. 6:1, 38). This is said…
The Bible expresses its chronology not only in sequences of years, but also in sequences of sabbath years and jubilees. This enables us to make a cross-check of our chronology, and when we find apparent problems, to refine it. If our chronology is right, we should find some significant correlations…
Adele Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative Sheffield, England: Almond Press, 1983. This volume is the ninth in the "Bible and Literature Series" under the general editorship of David M. Gunn. According to its author, who teaches Hebrew at the University of Maryland, the book is an effort to…
V. Propp’s classic work Morphology of the Folktale (University of Texas, 1968) argues that one of the basic structures of folk literature is "lack, lack liquidated." A king sets out to look for a wife, and the tale ends with a wedding. Often, the hero sets out on some business…
Luke’s gospel begins and ends in the temple. It opens with Gabriel’s annunciation to the priest Zacharias (whose name, appropriately, means "Yahweh remembers") of the coming of a forerunner. Zacharias is performing priestly service at the time. The book ends with the joyful worship of a new priesthood in the…
Last time we arrived at the year A.M. 3960 as the date for the inauguration of the New Creation through the death, resurrection, ascension, and session of Christ, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. We also saw that this is most likely the year of Paul’s conversion. Fourteen years…
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L ook at a wall, suggests Matthew Crawford ( The World Beyond Your Head ). What color is it? You probably have an answer, a simple one, but when you force yourself to look closely you can see all sorts of variations. The paint is uneven; the old color shows…
P rior to the 1830s, argues JCD Clark ( The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832 ), British political debate was carried on with denominational idioms. Political divides were denominational divides. Political and denominational issues overlapped and intertwined. Political networks, on both sides of the Atlantic, followed denominational pathways. As Clark puts…
I n Revelation, martyrs sing before martyrdom and after martyrdom (Revelation 14-15). Their martyr songs are the war songs of the Lamb, the triumphal chants of those who overcome because they, like the Lamb, do not love life even to death. It doesn't happen only in Revelation. In his comments…
S ummarizing themes from his Love, Sex, and Tragedy , Simon Goldhill highlights the difference between ancient Greek conceptions of eros and Christian and post-Christian conceptions of romantic love. Even the most famous lovers of Greek antiquity, he writes, don’t express themselves with the little nothings that are normal among…
I n a TLS review of several new books on Kierkegaard, Will Rees comments on the therapeutic cruelty of Kierkegaard’s writing. In Sickness Unto Death , “Anti-Climacus explains how, far from an inheritance of birth, the ‘self’ is in fact a vocation – something that one must forge in a…
D evoney Looser says that Jane Austen’s juvenilia is an exercise in burlesque . Not the strip-tease variety, but not so far from that either: “Where a parody sets out to mimic conventions and make us laugh, a burlesque relies ‘on an extravagant incongruity between a subject and its treatment.’…
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