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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Studies

Is Abraham’s Life a Type?

The preceding essay has caused me to consider the possibility that the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis contains a typological prophecy of the history of Israel; that is, that the events in Abraham’s life broadly anticipate events in Israel’s history. This kind of pattern is seen in the…

by James B. JordanMay 5, 2001
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Hermeneutics

Thirty-Eight Years by the Sheep Pool

by: Jeff Meyers and James Jordan In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we read of a man who had been ill for 38 years and who was lying by a pool located by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. This sheep waited, as did many other infirm people, for an…

by Jeff MeyersDecember 5, 2000
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Biblical Horizons

How Are Women Saved?

What had been reduced to ruin by this sex, would by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. —Tertullian What is Paul saying about women and salvation…

by Jeff MeyersOctober 5, 2000
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Jeremiah

The Return of Hamor

Back in Biblical Horizons 132 I discussed the horrible abuse of the converted men of Salem/Shechem in Genesis 34. These Hivites had joined the covenant by circumcision and then were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. That, however, is not the end of their story. In Joshua 9 we find the…

by James B. JordanOctober 4, 2000
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Biblical Horizons

Abram’s 318 Men

Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 2000
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Hermeneutics

153 Large Fish

Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 2000

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Proverbs 12:8-14

INTRODUCTION This section of Proverbs focuses on issues of image, wealth, work, and treatment of employees (vv. 8-12), and ends with two verses that deal again with the use of the tongue (vv. 13-14). The final verses connect this section to the preceding section of this chapter (12:1-7). Thus, the…

January 6, 2006
Literature

Hamlet in Prufrock

The influence of Hamlet, the play and the character, on modern literature is vast. Consider Hamlet as model for Prufrock: Zulfikar Ghose says the “I am not Hamlet” in Eliot’s Prufrock may be literal or ironic, but then adds: “the more one ponders the language of ‘Prufrock’ and of Hamlet…

January 5, 2006
Literature

Pierre

Herman Melville’s Pierre (1852) was, to put it mildly, not warmly received by critics. One newspaper headlined its review with “HERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY” and another reviewer complained that Melville’s fancy was diseased. Critics are divided over whether it is a grand failure or simply a failure. Updike caught the tone…

January 5, 2006

Schleiermacher

Bauman distinguishes between the “legislative” notion of reason found in Kant and other Enlightenment figures and the “interpretive” rationality that characterizes much postmodern thought. The shift from the former to the latter was not accomplished all at once. Schleiermacher, for all importance in the rise of hermeneutics, was still aiming…

January 5, 2006
Philosophy

Foundations and Tribunals

The architectural model of building a structure of thought on “foundations” is among the metaphors employed by modern thinkers, and in this as in other areas there was a close alliance of philosophy and political action. Bauman notes that this was particularly evident in various utopian writers of the modern…

January 5, 2006
History

Postmodern critique, postmodern re-enchantment

“Postmodernity,” writes Zygmunt Bauman in his 1992 Intimations of Postmodernity , “means many different things to many different people. It may mean a building that arrogantly flaunts the ‘orders’ prescribing what fits what and what should be kept strictly out to preserve the functional logic of steel, glass and concrete.…

January 5, 2006

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