Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
My copy of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1976: not so new, really) defines obscene as (1) "disgusting to the senses; repulsive" and (2) "abhorrent to morality or virtue; specif: designed to incite lust or depravity." Definitions such as this serve a useful purpose only when there is agreement on what…
An Overview Here begins a series of studies in the Abomination of Desolation, or Desolating Sacrilege. This month and next I shall set out an overview of what I regard as the best interpretation of the phenomenon. Later essays will look at it in more detail. (The original form of…
29. There are three things that are stately in their march, Even four that are stately when they walk: 30. The lion is mighty among beasts And does not turn back before any, 31. The strutting cock, The male goat, And a king with his army around him. 32. If…
We have seen that it is likely that the Artaxerxes of Ezra-Nehemiah is the same as Darius the Great. If this solution be correct, and I think it is, possibly there is another problem in Ezra that can be resolved by it. In Ezra 4:6 we are told that "in…
Czech novelist Milan Kundera, though hardly a household name in the English-speaking world, has achieved a certain notoriety in America in recent years, largely on the strength of the English translation and film version of his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 1 The Unbearable Lightness of Being — the…
24. Four things are small on the earth, But they are exceedingly wise; 25. The ants are not a strong folk, But they prepare their food in the summer; 26. The coneys are not a mighty folk, Yet they make their houses in the rocks; 27. The locusts have no…
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Bodies are objects, but beginning with Husserl philosophers, anthropologists and others have considered not the objective character of the body but the “live body” that is both a living object and a cultural artifact. In the sense that the lived body is a cultural artifact, writes John Dunnill in his…
In Sacrifice and the Body , John Dunnill makes the simple observation that most of what ancient Israelites sacrificed was food. This means that “the elements of thanksgiving and tribute, which are always implicitly present in such meal offerings, not only attribute the harvest to God, and return a small…
John Dunnill’s summary of the interconnections of gift, creation, covenant, sacrifice, and Trinity is lovely ( Sacrifice and the Body , 29): “To say that the world is gift, and that human life fulfills itself when it responds by giving, is more than a perception or ungrounded assertion about the…
Summarizing the prophetic critique of sacrifice, John Dunnill ( Sacrifice and the Body , 38) rebuts Roland de Vaux’s claim that “God demands first and foremost an interior religion” and that the prophets aimed their attacks as “outward religion” as such. Dunnill argues, on the contrary, that “the critique expresses…
In their 1994 The Archetypal Actions of Ritual , Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw attempt a philosophically sophisticated definition of ritual. Through a survey of the existing literature on ritual, the authors seek to determine what kind of theory or ritual is needed. They reject theories that claim that ritual…
In his study of circumcision, Marked in Your Flesh , Leonard Glick picks up a suggestion made by Jon Levenson that circumcision in ancient Israel might symbolize child sacrifice. The cutting of the foreskin would function as a substitute for the cutting of the child, a reenactment of the aqedah…
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