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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Horizons

Who Rules the Land? The Meaning of the Noahic Covenant, Part 1

It is commonly held in Reformed thought that the Noahic Covenant is given to all men equally. The Noahic Covenant concerns "man," not simply "church," and establishes civil government as an institution among "mankind" — that is the theory. Sometimes the Noahic Covenant is regarded as a "covenant of common…

by James B. JordanNovember 23, 1990
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Daniel

The Babylonian Connection

The Fall of Jerusalem we have dated (provisionally) at 3426 Anno Mundi. In current B.C. dates this is 586 B.C. From this point forward in Biblical chronology we are required to make use of prophetic numbers rather than historical ones. Jeremiah prophesied that the captivity would last 70 years, but…

by James B. JordanNovember 16, 1990
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Biblical Horizons

Taking the Situation Seriously

Evangelicals have in recent years become more interested in looking into their Bibles for wisdom to deal with modern problems. This is undoubtedly a welcome development, after many years of neglect. But there are dangers and costs as well. One of these is the tendency to fall into a modern…

by Peter LeithartOctober 19, 1990
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Hermeneutics

The Unseen Things

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). The famous definition of faith with which the eleventh chapter of Hebrews opens has received a number of different interpretations. The crux of the problem is the interpretation of the words translated in…

by Peter LeithartOctober 19, 1990
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Proverbs

Advice From a Sojourner, Part 8

15. The leech has two daughters, "Give," "Give." There are three things that will not be satisfied, Four that will not say, "Enough": 16. Sheol, And the barren womb, Earth, that is never satisfied with water, And fire that never says, "Enough." We are assuming, at least for the purposes…

by James B. JordanOctober 16, 1990
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Biblical Chronology

Confusion Among the Kings

As we have seen in previous installments in this series, the Old Testament is quite concerned with chronology, and carefully records chronological data for our use. For this reason, we can assume when we come to the chronology of the kings of Judah and Israel that the writers of the…

by James B. JordanOctober 2, 1990

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Consuming Israel

I have commented in the past on the bizarre Eucharistic imagery that ends Isaiah 49: “And I will feed your oppressors with their own flesh, And they will become drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine; And all flesh will know that I, the LORD, am your Savior,…

January 6, 2014

Novelty and theistic proof

Throughout the 40s of Isaiah, Yahweh promises to do something unprecedented, something new, for Israel. He will bring them from bondage - but he’s done that before. This time, he will bring them back by using Gentiles as agents of Israel’s liberation. That’s a new thing, better than the Exodus,…

January 6, 2014
History

The Center Cannot Hold

Linda Colley doesn’t think that the United Kingdom can remain united. In Acts of Union and Disunion , she following Benedict Anderson’s lead in claiming that nations are Imagined Communities , formed from myths and, as Colley says, “an attractive idea of what they are.” As summed up by the…

January 6, 2014
History

Victorian past

In his TLS review of Andrew Sanders’s In the Olden Time: Victorians and the British Past , AN Wilson suggests that Dickens was representative of his age in his “open hatred of the post, and his perky lower-middle-class joy in nowadays.” Not all Victorians shared Dickens’s progressivism: “Ruskin deplored Dickens’s…

January 6, 2014
Biblical Studies

Biblical criticism

A sketch of a Jensonian critique of historical criticism of Scripture: The Bible must be understood in its historical context. In practice, this means that the Bible’s historical claims are relativized to the discoveries of ancient historical investigation, archaeology, etc. If the bricks and pottery shards say that Jericho didn’t…

January 6, 2014

Genealogy and Story

The book of Genesis is neatly divided into sections by toledoth statements: “These are the generations of” or some variation. The phrase means “these are the things generated by” so and so, and the things generated are often children. But there is a variation within the book between genealogies and…

June 21, 2013

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