Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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Intertextuality is a buzz word in contemporary biblical scholarship. In New Testament studies, the impetus has come not only from literary critical approaches but from the “New Perspective on Paul,” whose main advocate, EP Sanders, encouraged the study of Pauline echoes and allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures and contemporary Jewish…
Shlomo Sand argues in How I Stopped Being A Jew that “he foundations on which the State of Israel was created were essentially laid by socialists from the various Eastern European nations. These individuals were secularists who rebelled against Judaism, yet they were forced none the less to adopt from…
In a 2001 article in History of Religious , Guy Stroumsa hightlights the role of John Spencer’s De legibus hebraeorum ritualibus (1685), sometime master of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, in the development of evolutionary and scientific studies of religion. Spencer, in turn, drew heavily on Jewish sources. Stroumsa writes, “Spencer was…
Yahweh promises Abram a son, but he grows old. He knows that his son will come from his own flesh (Genesis 15) but he doesn’t yet know that Sarai will be the mother (cf. Genesis 17). Sarai comes up with a plan: Hagar can serve as surrogate. Sarai’s goal is…
The final chapters of Isaiah are a letdown. From chapter 40 on, Isaiah has given a brilliant portrait of the coming redemption, a return from exile. Yahweh will return to His people. His Servant will bring justice to the nations. Gentile kings - Cyrus especially - will build Yahweh’s house.…
In his Criticism of Heaven , Roland Boer lays out a taxonomy of how Marxism has related to the Bible. There are three categories: biblical Marxism, Catholic Marxism, and the “Protestant turn.” In the first category are Marxists like Ernst Block and Walter Benjamin who interact with Christianity primarily by…
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