Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When Samuel saw Saul, Yahweh answered him, "Behold, the man of whom I spoke to you! This one will restrain My people" (1 Samuel 9:17) Many English versions of 1 Samuel 9:17 read, "This one will rule over My people," but that is a mistranslation. The Hebrew verb is `atsar…
We have arrived at the tentative date of A.M. 3474 for the decree of Cyrus, and we have determined to operate as if the 70 weeks of Daniel 9 are literal years. We also decided that Messiah the Prince arrives at the beginning of the 70th week, after the 69…
The book of Proverbs appears as a largely random collection of aphorisms drawn from experience saturated in law. Despite its random arrangement, however, the book does have an over-arching structure that reinforces its main themes. One way to gather clues regarding the structure of a biblical book (or any book)…
I recently had the privilege and pleasure of reading the first draught of Gary North’s Economic Commentary on Leviticus , which will be out some time next year. Gary’s comments on Leviticus 27 were stimulating, and caused me to take another look at the passage. The results, which I sent…
As we have seen in this series, each time there is a new covenant, there is a break in the year-by-year chronology. At the same time, each time the break is crossed by information provided in the text. Thus, the year-by-year chronology breaks down at the birth of Abraham, but…
The Openness of Literature Let’s discuss literature for a moment. There are two ways a story or novel can close. The first is called poetic justice. When a story ends with poetic justice, the bad guys are all punished and the good guys are all rewarded. This kind of story…
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In the introduction to his Meditations on the Sacraments , Karl Rahner describes what he calls the “Copernican revolution” in sacramental theology. To explain the shift in perspective, he asks how Christians have generally experienced the sacraments. According to Rahner, “the average Christian” believes “both externally and internally, human life…
S tewart Alsop begins his book on Washington, DC, The Center , by observing that DC wasn't always the center: “during the long prewar political doldrums, the era of the doughface Presidents, it was no true center of power. Nor was it in the decades between Abraham Lincoln and Theodore…
J B Kennedy's The Musical Structure of Plato's Dialogues is a kind of Bible Code for classical philosophy. In a 2010 article in Apeiron (“Plato, Pythagoreanism, and Stichometry”), Kennedy lays out the basic argument. Kennedy's argument begins from the observation that Greek prose writers, like poets, composed their works in…
S ome gleanings from CJ Labuschagne's Numerical Secrets of the Bible on the Psalms. On Psalm 23: “the three words in the phrase ki a atta immadi, ‘ for you are with me' (23:4), are situated in the mathematical center of the text, with 26 words preceding them and 26…
B ack in the 1990s, seminaries seemed to be thriving. A 1994 cover piece in Christianity Today reported , “In 1992, the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) reported a 9.8 percent enrollment increase over 1991, the largest single increase ever recorded. There was a full-time-equivalent enrollment of 46,400 students in…
H enri de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum is a densely detailed study of the changing punctuation of the medieval theology of the triple body of Christ. “Body of Christ” has a threefold significance: His historical body, in which He lived, died, and rose again; His sacramental body, the bread of the…
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