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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The Torah never mentions breasts as an object of erotic fascination; they are solely nourishment for infants. In the wisdom literature, things are different. Solomon encourages young men to delight in the breasts of their wives - not of another, a strange woman (Proverbs 5) -, and in the Song…
Solomon describes the beauty of his beloved in a neat and symmetrical poem in Song of Songs 7:1-6. Framed by “how beautiful you are” (vv. 1, 6), the poem describes ten features of her body. He starts with her feet and his gaze makes its way up. The ten features…
The old adage applies in spades to the covers of Pride and Prejudice sampled in the NYTBR . Don’t judge the book by any of these covers, especially the Lady Godiva, the Twilight knock-off, and the “smokin’ bad boy Darcy” ones.
Technology promises to accomplish the same things that have always been done more efficiently. Borgmann is skeptical ( Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry ) (45-46), and he summarizes George Sturt’s The Wheelwright’s Shop (Craftsman) to explain the notion of the “concealment” of technology, the fact…
In his Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry , Albert Borgmann makes a crucial distinction between a technical device and its machinery. This is “a specific instance of the means-ends distinction” (43), the machinery being the means by which the device becomes useful to its user.…
Claude Rawson’s review of Alastair Fowler’s Literary Names: Personal Names in English Literature focuses on names used to mock and deride. Swift, for instance, “attached enormous importance to naming and not being named (a characteristic Fowler incidentally identifies with Milton’s fallen angels). Swift scrupulously marked with an ‘X; every reference…
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