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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W e should, Paul Griffiths says ( Decreation , 324–5), be careful about the aesthetic judgments we make: “every human creature's formation in the discernment and delight in beauty is different, and because each of us is badly damaged with respect to our capacity to make reliable judgments about the…
As recorded in the supplement to the Summa , Thomas Aquinas teaches that the damned will rise again with bodies and will be tormented in hell corporeally. This leaves open questions about the materiality of the various biblical descriptions of those torments, and in question 97 of the supplement, Thomas…
In his Organizing Enlightenment , Chad Wellmon explains how the modern research university was a response to a crisis of “information overload.” The Enlightenment saw an explosion of new knowledge and research. The Enlightenment empire of erudition was a bookish empire. Philosophes imagined they could provide a unified account of…
If the infinite God is to be present within a finite creation, writes David Bentley Hart ( Beauty of the Infinite , 204), “the finite must . . . become ever more open, ever greater and more capacious . . . ; and creaturely mutability allows for this.” Hart is…
T he name of R.J. Rushdoony, the polymathic Reformed theologian, historian, and activist, has appeared with increasing frequency in accounts of the religious right. There is a small industry in screeds warning of the dire threat of theocracy, and Rushdoony plays the role of the father of all theocrats. It's…
The prophecy of Habakkuk closes with a lovely poem of joy in the midst of adversity and lack (Habakkuk 3:17-19). The poem opens with six lines that describe the barrenness of the land. It is a nihil-land; the Hebrew negative lo' occurs twice (“fig tree does not blossom”; “the field…
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