Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Higher critics have, for a long time, posited a Second Isaiah to account for the structural and tone differences in the book from chapter 40 on. Now, we do believe in a Second Isaiah, but believe that the form critics have generally suffered from a lack of imagination both in…
A couple of the most serious mistranslations in our Bibles are found in the book of Leviticus. The main reason these errors have gone unreformed, I believe, is because Leviticus is simply not studied often enough, so the problem has never been fully addressed. The first mistranslation is found right…
Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , is really a parenthesis inside of the larger reality of Christian history. Progress and forward movement inside of science is a footnote to the larger and more general reality of covenant renewals in both Biblical and Christian history. The fundamental mark…
James Jordan, in the June/July 1995 Biblical Horizons, wrote a very helpful essay, "The Great Hangover," the gist of which I entirely agree with. The theme of the essay was that the Church to move forward must shuck off the old husks of Hellenism, Rabbinism, and undo admiration for all…
Traditionally, the three offices in the Presbyterian churches have been teaching elder, ruling elder, and deacon. These have been associated with priest, elder, and Levite respectively. We have seen that the deacon is in fact an apprentice and assistance elder. We have also seen that Levites as well as priests…
John 7:39 interprets Jesus’ offer of living water as an offer of the Spirit to those who believe, "for," John continues, "the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified." John was not making an ontological statement about the Spirit, as if the Spirit did not exist until…
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Traci Slatton, novelist wife of sculptor Sabin Howard, is ecstatic about sculpture. Her 2011 Art of Life is a passionate, occasionally overwrought, defense of sculpture as the master art, filled with photos of her husband’s stunning classical figures. She points out the complexity of sculpting. While a painting presents a…
James ends his epistle with instructions to believers in various conditions of need. The suffering are instructed to pray, the joyful to sing, and the sick to call for the elders who will anoint the sick and raise him up. The three instructions match the three offices of Christ and…
Joy is the keynote of the new heavens and new earth that Yahweh will create, as Isaiah announces in the chiastically structured prophecy in 65:18: A. Be glad ( sus ) B. and rejoice ( giyl ) forever C. in what I myself create C’. for behold I create Jerusalem…
Things are not as they should be, and Judah calls for Yahweh to descend to help. Rip the heavens, shake the earth, boil the sea; tear the three-story house of the universe apart brick by brick, but come down to help! (Isaiah 64). Judah has come to acknowledge that she’s…
Shlomo Sand’s forthcoming How I Stopped Being A Jew is a sharp slap to the brain. He challenges many of today’s tropes of Jewishness - the notion that there is a “Jewish culture,” the exclusive attention to Jewish suffering at the hands of Nazis, the contempt of Yiddish language and…
It’s one of the most dramatic illustrations of the unsurpassability of the Christian era: During the Enlightenment, secular thinkers and Deists turned against the established churches. Their reason was that the churches interfered with their hope for the unity of the human race. As Guy Stroumsa puts it ( A…
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