Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Building of the Temple Solomon began work on the Temple in the second month of his fourth year. This was the year 2993, a sabbath year. He finished in the eighth month of his eleventh year, the year 3000, also a sabbath. (1 Ki. 6:1, 38). This is said…
The Bible expresses its chronology not only in sequences of years, but also in sequences of sabbath years and jubilees. This enables us to make a cross-check of our chronology, and when we find apparent problems, to refine it. If our chronology is right, we should find some significant correlations…
Adele Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative Sheffield, England: Almond Press, 1983. This volume is the ninth in the "Bible and Literature Series" under the general editorship of David M. Gunn. According to its author, who teaches Hebrew at the University of Maryland, the book is an effort to…
V. Propp’s classic work Morphology of the Folktale (University of Texas, 1968) argues that one of the basic structures of folk literature is "lack, lack liquidated." A king sets out to look for a wife, and the tale ends with a wedding. Often, the hero sets out on some business…
Luke’s gospel begins and ends in the temple. It opens with Gabriel’s annunciation to the priest Zacharias (whose name, appropriately, means "Yahweh remembers") of the coming of a forerunner. Zacharias is performing priestly service at the time. The book ends with the joyful worship of a new priesthood in the…
Last time we arrived at the year A.M. 3960 as the date for the inauguration of the New Creation through the death, resurrection, ascension, and session of Christ, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. We also saw that this is most likely the year of Paul’s conversion. Fourteen years…
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The heretics that John attacks in his epistles are said to deny that Jesus came in the flesh. The coming is past in 1 John 4:2, but the tense is different in 2 John 7. Stott comments, “In strict grammar this should refer to a future coming, and some have…
Rosenstock-Huessy says that the Papal revolution led by Gregory VII was the first total revolution It was a mutiny against the papacy’s defense on the palace: “The papacy cut the direct and domestic relation between throne and altar in every manor or palace, and claimed the right to be guardian…
A few days ago, I suggested that the Federal Vision controversy in the Reformed churches is a “Presbyterian identity crisis.” But I don’t want to minimize the theological dimension of this debate. The issue is how to express the real theological differences, as opposed to the host of imaginary differences…
In Ephesians 4, Paul describes the sevenfold unity of the church. The numerical connection with Genesis 1-2 already indicates that the church is the new creation, formed by the word of God and the “seven Spirits” into a united cosmos. But the seven unities might also link in detail to…
Robert Newton Peck writes about Baptist baptism in his novel, A Day No Pigs Would Die : “Baptists were a strange lot. They put you in water to see how holy you were. Then they ducked you under the water three times. Didn’t matter a whit if you could swim…
Commenting on Colossians 2 in the NIV Application Commentary, David Garland says, “Baptism marks the defeat of the powers that formerly held sway over us. Those who have died with Christ and have been raised with him no longer live under the old regime, where the authorities hold sway. Baptism…
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