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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Studies

Is Abraham’s Life a Type?

The preceding essay has caused me to consider the possibility that the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis contains a typological prophecy of the history of Israel; that is, that the events in Abraham’s life broadly anticipate events in Israel’s history. This kind of pattern is seen in the…

by James B. JordanMay 5, 2001
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Hermeneutics

Thirty-Eight Years by the Sheep Pool

by: Jeff Meyers and James Jordan In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we read of a man who had been ill for 38 years and who was lying by a pool located by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. This sheep waited, as did many other infirm people, for an…

by Jeff MeyersDecember 5, 2000
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Biblical Horizons

How Are Women Saved?

What had been reduced to ruin by this sex, would by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. —Tertullian What is Paul saying about women and salvation…

by Jeff MeyersOctober 5, 2000
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Jeremiah

The Return of Hamor

Back in Biblical Horizons 132 I discussed the horrible abuse of the converted men of Salem/Shechem in Genesis 34. These Hivites had joined the covenant by circumcision and then were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. That, however, is not the end of their story. In Joshua 9 we find the…

by James B. JordanOctober 4, 2000
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Biblical Horizons

Abram’s 318 Men

Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 2000
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Hermeneutics

153 Large Fish

Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 2000

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Apostasy and Assurance

Pastor Steve Wilkins clarifies the question of apostasy and assurance at the Trinity House site .

July 16, 2014

In Defense of Spain

Hugh Thomas’s World Without End is the final installment of his trilogy on imperialism in the century after Columbus. It focuses on what Thomas calls the “age of administration,” the age (in the words of the Economist reviewer) “in which professional officials, many of them clerics, gradually took over from…

July 15, 2014

Egyptomania: TLS Review

The TLS reviewer of David Gange’s Dialogues with the Dead and Bob Brier’s Egyptomania catalogues some of the Egyptian trinkets that amused Victorians: “Victorian ladies wore sarcophagi charms and brooches of winged scarabs; men’s coat buttons were embossed with pharaohs’ heads. ‘Egyptian’ cigarettes were all the rage along with smoking…

July 15, 2014

Medieval Modernist

Anthony Flint’s forthcoming biography of Le Corbusier, Modern Man , recounts the architect’s famous exploits, sexual, artistic, intellectual. It’s a lively story, breezily written. What surprises is the impact that what Flint characterizes as a “side trip” to the Carthusian Monastery of Val D’ema had on the architect. The honeycomb…

July 15, 2014

Hagar as Israel

Paul tells the story of Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac as an allegory (Galatians 4). He’s not reading into the text. He’s reading an allegory out of the text, an allegory that would have been evident to Israelite readers of the exodus generation. Hagar is the first human being…

July 15, 2014

Land-Sanctuary

At the 2014 Biblical Horizons summer conference last week, James Jordan argued that, unlike the tabernacle that is a reconstituted garden, the temple draws its imagery from the land. The architectural symbolism of the temple includes trees, pomegranates, lilies, lions, palm trees, and other flora and fauna that were not…

July 15, 2014

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