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Biblical Horizons

OPEN BOOK: Views and Reviews

Isaac E. Mozeson, The Word: The Dictionary that Reveals the Hebrew Sources of English (Northvale, NJ: Jacob Aaronson Inc., 1995), 310 pp. Reviewed by James B. Jordan. Once there was only one language in the world, the language God spoke to Adam. At the Tower of Babel, there came to…

by James B. JordanJune 28, 1996
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Esther

Esther: Historical & Chronological Comments (IV)

2. The Setting of the Book of Esther A. Xerxes (continued from previous issue) Ezra 6:14 says that the Jews finished building "according to the command of the God of Israel and the decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes king of Persia." The problem with this verse is that…

by James B. JordanJune 28, 1996
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Acts

Jesus and Amalek

This essay goes with our previous study of the Amalek pattern back in Biblical Horizons No. 2. Since many do not have this essay, entitled "The Battle of Gog and Magog," let me cite the relevant paragraphs: Note in Genesis 12-15 that Abram moves into the land after escaping Pharaoh…

by James B. JordanJune 28, 1996
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Proverbs

The Strange Woman

Proverbs 7:6-23 is one of several passages early in the Proverbs in which Solomon warns his son about the wiles and dangers of the "strange woman." It is certainly quite proper to take these as straightforward warnings against sexual sins, and these are certainly warnings that need to be impressed…

by Peter LeithartJune 27, 1996
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Biblical Studies

Some Observations

1. In Luke 4:20 we read that after Jesus finished reading from Isaiah, "the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon Him." This is usually taken in a psychological sense: They were amazed at Jesus somehow. I suggest that, as always, a merely psychological reading is a modern…

by James B. JordanMay 28, 1996
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Esther

Esther: Historical & Chronological Comments (III)

2. The Setting of the Book of Esther Up to now we have assumed what we must prove, that the king in Esther is Darius the Great. While Biblical chronologists have usually taken this position, commentators on the book of Esther have often taken others as the king. One view,…

by James B. JordanMay 28, 1996

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Two Churches

J ohn Bale, bishop of Ossory from 1495 to 1563, was a polemicist and historian, author of the first known verse drama in English, and commentator on the Apocalypse. The latter is titled An Image of Both Churches , an examination of the true and false churches in the book…

September 9, 2016
Typology

Weavers and Ships

H ippolytus doesn’t convince with his interpretation of prophecy in On Christ and AntiChrist , but along the way he offers some lovely meditations on the cross and the church. The cross, He says, is the weaver’s loom on which Jesus makes His bridegroom robes: “whereas the Word of God…

September 9, 2016

The Big Story

I n a 2005 interview with the Paris Review , Australian poet Les Murray describes his family’s religious background, and the reasons for his conversion to Catholicism: The Murrays were old-style Free Kirk Presbyterians. They ranged from devout to indifferent, but most had at least a touch of that Calvinist…

September 9, 2016
Theology

The Task of Theology

T. A. Noble ( Holy Trinity, Holy People , 7) says this about the role of the Bible in theology in a discussion of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (which, he rightly says, isn’t just Wesleyan): It is not the task of theology merely to expound and elaborate and refine the church’s…

September 9, 2016

Uncaused Events

I t’s been a metaphysical dogma for philosophers from Scholastics to Cartesians that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. John Milbank begs to differ. Writing in defense of the historicity of the Gospels’ account of the crucifixion ( Being Reconciled , 84), Milbank points out that “well-attested and…

September 9, 2016
Liberalism

Liberal totalitarianism

In a brilliant 2013 article in Communio , D.C. Schindler examines the “totalitarian logic of self-limitation” within liberal order. He argues that any actual common good must precede a particular person's share in the good; the whole precedes sharing by the parts. A ruse appears at the heart of liberal…

September 9, 2016

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