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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A 2011 article in the Bulletin for Biblical Research attempts to identify the modern names for the gemstones that are found in the Septuagint. James Harrell, a geologist at the University of Toledo, explains some of the complications. It won’t do, he argues, to try to identify the Hebrew names…
Deborah and Barak go out to fight, and the people of Meroz refuse to join them. In Deborah’s song (Judges 5), Yahweh’s angel curses Meroz in staggering terms: “Curse you bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord…
Harold Bloom argued in his American Religion that Mormonism was the quintessential American religion. Bloom had his own Gnostic reasons for saying that, but his basic point finds confirmation in Eran Shalev’s American Zion . Shalev presents Mormonism as a convergence of at least two American trends. On the one…
In her study of Tudor-Stuart notions of metaphor ( Translating Investments ), Judith Anderson explores the significance of nominal sentences - sentences without verbs, much used in ancient languages but rare in English. Does a nominal sentence imply a copulative verb of being? Or is it expressing some other sort…
There’s a certain common-sense logic to the notion that we have to begin our efforts toward unity and catholicity within our own group. First get all Lutherans could get together, and all Anglicans, and all Presbyterians, and then maybe we’d be ready to talk about getting those bundled churches together…
One of the great evils of Protestant tribalism is the impact it has on our prayers. There’s no way to tell, but I suspect that few Protestant churches, especially Evangelical churches, pray regularly for reform in the Catholic and Orthodox churches. It’s easy to neglect such prayers, so long as…
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