Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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Through much of Kings, the parallel of North and South has been deigned to emphasize the South’s apostasy. When the South becomes a mirror-image of the idolatrous North, it’s a sign of Judah’s doom. Here, the mirroring goes the other way: Yahweh’s faithfulness to David’s house is reflected in His…
Shakespeare’s Antony is an Aeneas who refuses to act piously by leaving his Dido and moving on to found Rome. Hence, in pursuit of Cleopatra he leaves Empire to Octavius, and Aeneas is split between the two of them. But Antony is also an Aeneas who will never be separated…
According to Deuteronomy 20, any man who had built a house, planted a vineyard, or married a wife without enjoying their benefits and joys was excused from military service. While it was certainly possible for a 20-year-old Israelite to be unmarried and propertyless, it would seem that the military was…
In his book on the Deuteronomistic history, Terence Fretheim notes the marked differences between God’s dealings with Israel and the expectations suggested by suzereignty treaties: “the historian makes it abundantly clear that God is not bound to react to the people in some schematic or univocal fashion. The relationship between…
Here’s a PhD thesis: What is going on, philosophically and theologically, in the transition from viewing Joshua-2 Kings as Former Prophets (Jewish tradition) to seeing them as Historical Books (evangelical) to seeing them as Deuteronomistic History (contemporary academic consensus). There’s a story to unpack there similar to the story that…
Jesus comes telling parables, so that seeing they might not see and hearing they might not understand. Yahweh does the same in Kings; He tells and enacts parables that are understood only by those who have received the wisdom that comes from God. It is, as with Jesus and Paul,…
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