Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the 48th year, the third month, and the fourteenth night, while I slept in my bed, I was taken in vision to Xanadu and set upon a high hill. Looking to the west, I saw a large building, surrounded with gardens and fountains, walks and gravestones, and a bell…
‘Tis the season to be informed–sometimes in gentleness, often with vigor–by a variety of Christians (and others) 1 claiming that it is wrong to celebrate Christmas. I have no desire to force anyone to celebrate Christmas against their will. Indeed, it would be insulting to the high holiday to pretend…
Part 2: The Enoch Factor Back in Open Book 21 we discussed "The Enoch Factor." Because that was several years ago (May 1994) and many people have begun reading this letter since that time, we shall return to the subject here and expand what we wrote at that time. After…
Day 6. The sixth day provides the creation of land animals and of humanity. As we saw above, the second day spills over to the first half of the third day, for only at that point did God say that it was good. Similarly, it seems that the fifth day…
During the past two decades, the "quest of the historical Jesus" has entered a new phase. The first incarnation of the quest was rudely shaken by the publication of Albert Schweitzer’s classic Quest of the Historical Jesus , easily the most devastating and funniest work of New Testament scholarship ever…
At the 1997 Biblical Horizons Summer Conference, the Rev. Jeffrey Meyers presented a series of remarkable lectures on the gospel of Mark. Among his many insightful comments, he suggested that the second gospel continues where the first gospel ends; Matthew ends with Jesus saying "Go" (Matthew 28:19), and Mark’s shows…
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Robert Wilken ( The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought ) has written that “Eusebius directed attention, for the first time in Christian history, to the religious and theological significance of space.” In describing the church of the Resurrection, he uses “a sacral vocabulary that has few…
In a 1959 article “Christian Envy of the Temple,” H. Nibley points out that the early Christians derived their liturgical theology from the temple: “They boast that the Church possesses all the physical properties of the Temple-the oil, the myrrh, the altar, the incense, hymns, priestly robes, etc., everything, in…
Truth-telling has come to be seen as mean-spirited, bigoted, nasty. Truth-telling is hateful, we have come to believe. Soothing lies are often preferred. Solomon sees things different. “A lying tongue hates those it crushes” (Proverbs 26:27). That carries two implications, each of which has a converse. First, it indicates that…
PROVERBS 26:22 Language is a constant theme of the Proverbs. Wisdom is skill, and one of the central skills a wise person must learn is skill in speech. This skill has not only to do with speaking the truth, but even more with questions of tone and timing. Wisdom is…
Angeliki E. Laiou has another revealing article in the Wealth and Poverty volume cited earlier. She notes the regular warnings and even condemnations of commerce in the patristic literature, and goes on to examine medieval and Byzantine hagiography for the same themes. She is surprised to find a fairly positive…
An article by A. Edward Siecienski (in Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society (Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History) ) raises the question of the balance between liturgical splendor and poverty relief in the early church. He points out that even John Chrysostom, who thundered so…
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