Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I mentioned last month ( BH 82) in my essay "Like a Dove" that Genesis 8 is a recapitulation of Genesis 1. Let me explicate that assertion here. Of course, the world after the Flood is a new creation, so we may expect a recapitulation of the first creation. It…
The book of Esther is one of the most neglected of the books of the Bible. To be sure, sermons are preached on it, and commentaries have occasionally been written on it, but almost without exception Esther has been interpreted in isolation from the rest of Biblical history, chronology, and…
Dear Mr. ______, . . . Here is how I look at the geocentricity question. Since I don’t recall what I wrote you before, I may be repeating some things. 1. The Bible does not teach it. Biblical passages used to support the idea are being misinterpreted. My original paper…
Answer 4 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is often taken as a magnificent answer to the question, "What is God?" It reads: "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Presbyterians are fond of praising this statement, preaching on it,…
The gospels tell us that at Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him "in bodily form like a dove" (Luke 3:22 & parallels). Biblically sensitive commentators have associated this event with three Old Testament parallels: (1) the hovering of the Spirit over the creation in Genesis 1:2; (2) the…
This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. (John 8:6) The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) has been part of the canonical Christian Bible from its earliest…
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Does the intention of the author determine the sense? There are problems with saying Yes, particularly when “intention” is assumed to be the mental state of the author, which is unrecoverable. There are also problems with saying No, because that seems to introduce (as ED Hirsch argues) a hermeneutical free-for-all.…
In an article in Theology Today (1980), David Steinmetz quotes Benjamin’s Jowett’s essay on the interpretation of Scripture (1859), which insists on a single meaning in a text - the meaning intended by the author and understood by the original audience. Steinmetz admits that critical scholarship has moved on since…
Dahood takes “righteous” in Psalm 118:15, 19 as “victory.” The joyful shouting is heard from the tents of the victorious, and the gates are the gates of victory. He cites Isaiah 41:2 and 49:24 as other texts where this nuance of ZDK comes to the fore. The meaning could be:…
More notes, taken from or inspired by Michael Dahood’s Anchor Bible commentary. 1) Dahood makes good sense of the entire Psalm by assuming that it moves from a place of battle and victory (vv. 5-14), to the victory celebration in the tents of the war camp (vv. 15-18), and then…
With his usual critical insight, Auden captured Austen’s knowingness in a poem about Byron: You could not shock her more than she shocks me; Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass. It makes me most uncomfortable to see An English spinster of the middle class Describe the amorous effects of…
Gregory the Great again: “he that treats of sacred writ should follow the way of a river, for if a river, as it flows along its channel, meets with open valleys on its side, into these it immediately turns the course of its current, and when they are copiously supplised,…
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