Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Summary : The Bible is a multi-faceted text. As a result, it can fruitfully be analyzed in many ways. Pace, context, flow, imagery: all of these aspects of the Biblical text are significant and instructive. Here, by way of illustration, I analyze Gen. 38 in a range of different ways,…
Summary: The Bible is a multi-faceted text. As a result, it can fruitfully be analysed in many ways. Pace, context, flow, imagery: all of these aspects of the Biblical text are significant and instructive. Here, by way of illustration, I analyse Gen. 38 in a range of different ways, and…
The closing chapters of the Bible bring to fulfillment the mission inaugurated in the opening chapters of the Bible: the dwelling place of God expands to fill the entire new creation. The story of Scripture concludes having achieved God’s original intent for His people in the Garden of Eden, and…
Oddly, the nature of pre -modern economies plays a central role in today’s policy debate over economic globalization and neo-liberalism. Analysts take ancient non-market economies as the standard against which to measure the economic and social effects of the market system. Scholars compare the distribution of economic goods and services…
In part one of this essay, I mentioned that the story of Zacchaeus includes not only many details that point to other passages in Luke, but also details that point to the Old Testament, though we might not initially think of them. The first detail I have in mind is…
The story of Zacchaeus includes numerous interesting details that link this story with others in the Gospel of Luke. There are also details that tie the story of Zacchaeus to the Old Testament in ways that we might not initially take note of. In the Gospel of Luke, the story…
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Leo Oppenheim ( Ancient Mesopotamia , 191-2) observed that the “difference that separates the sacrificial rituals in [Mesopotamia and the West] is the ‘blood consciousness’ of the West, its awareness of the magic power of blood, which is not paralleled in Mesopotamia.” Burning was another key difference: “The Old Testament…
Too much of the discussion of nature and the supernatural is conducted in the idiom of Aristotle rather than the Bible. Most obviously, for Scheeben, Rahner, and even de Lubac (though to a lesser extent), the issue is framed as a question concerning the constitution of human “nature” or the…
Israel was forbidden to eat serpent-like creatures who were in the curse-prosecuting dust, crawling on their “bellies” like the snake in the garden (Leviticus 11:42; cf. Genesis 3:14). Christians believe that was not a permanent prohibition. In the new covenant, all foods are available, even serpentine ones (Acts 10-11). Why…
Hosea (2:14-20) allegorizes the exodus as a love story. Yahweh lures Israel from Egypt to the wilderness, speaks to her heart, becomes her ‘ish (man) and no longer her Baal (lord, or Baal). Yahweh is promising to take Israel out to the wilderness for a second honeymoon, but that implies…
A. Buckler summarizes the evidence for what he describes as “non-Levitical” defilements in the book of Leviticus ( Studies in Sin and Atonement , 269): “In Jeremiah and Ezekiel idolatry defiled the land of God, and in Leviticus all the enormities of the Canaanites defiled the country and would have…
The late Mary Douglas observed in Leviticus as Literature (75) that the list of animal organs for sacrificial animals is very selective: “it is interesting to note how very few items of anatomy receive any mention at all. Conspicuously missing in these chapters is any express mention of neck, heart,…
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