Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When might the Gospel according to Matthew have been written? Of course, any answer can only be speculation, but that does not mean we are reduced to groundless opinion. In this series of articles I point the way to an approach different from the general consensus among scholars today which…
In my first essay on “synopticity” I offered a rather rough definition of the phenomenon and important, though not exhaustive examples. In this essay, I want to introduce broader aspects of the phenomenon of “synopticity.” The first example that I have in mind is conventional stories, stories of different historical…
Since the judgment of Babel was followed by the initiation of the circumcision, the impending end of the circumcision in AD70 explains the significance of the first century miracle of foreign tongues. Except for a few Aramaic “teasers” in the book of Daniel, the Word of God was monolingual and…
To the best of my knowledge “synopticity” is not a word used in theology or Biblical studies, but it seems an appropriate word to describe the kind of phenomena associated with the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These three Gospels tell essentially the same story with significant — sometimes…
Humor is a funny thing. It is altogether familiar yet also mysterious. What makes us laugh? Why do we find things funny? There are academic fields of study dedicated to discovering what makes things humorous. These academicians even have a journal entitled International Journal of Humor Research . No joke.…
Out of all the characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales , the Pardoner has been called the “one lost soul.” The pious Parson, who closes out the collection of tales with a sermon on the seven deadly sins and how a sinner can absolve himself of them, connects the…
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I t seems a given, a truism, that architecture is about space. Ali Madanipour indicates otherwise. In his Design of Urban Space, he notes that the word rarely appears in architecture texts books, and observes that “the term is relatively new, in the context of the long history of architecture,…
R obert Joustra and Alissa Wilkinson want to help readers learn How to Survive the Apocalypse that seems to be looming. They see signs of apocalyptic agitation everywhere in popular culture—in Battlestar Galactica , a technological apocalypse in the film Her , a zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead ,…
F irst Chronicles begins with nine long chapters of genealogy. Little is said about where these multitudes live. There are scattered hints of territory, but no elaborate description of the borders and boundaries of the tribes, as we find in the latter chapters of Joshua. The Chronicler attends only to…
N icholas Vazsonyi's Richard Wagner is subtitled “Self-Promotion and the Making of a Brand.” It's a study of the methods Wagner used to establish himself and his music as a brand: “creation of a persona, public relations, development of a niche and brand, marketing embedded in the theatrical works themselves,…
I n the mid-19th century, Princeton's Charles Hodge engaged in a public debate with the Mercersburg theologian John Williamson Nevin about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It was sparked by Nevin's book on The Mystical Presence , published in 1846, which Hodge reviewed in the Princeton Theological…
D ru Johnson's Knowledge By Ritual defends the thesis that we come to know—to recognize and to discern, to see rightly—through ritualized action. In the course of defending this thesis, Johnson devotes a few pages to explaining the biblical notion of truth. He points out that truth can apply to…
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