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

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Hermeneutics

The Structure of the Joseph Narrative

(Genesis 37:2 – 50:26) A. Generations of Jacob, 37:2a B. Joseph hated by brothers, 37:2b C. Jacob’s discriminatory blessing, 37:3-4 D. Rule over family: vision, 37:5-11 E. Joseph seeks brothers, 37:12-17 F. Joseph "killed," 37:18-36 G. Judah’s sin, ch. 38 H. Imprisonment, though undeserved, ch. 39-40 I. Famine and Pharaoh,…

by James B. JordanJanuary 4, 1999
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Exodus

Crisis Time: Patriarchal Prologue, Part 5

Moses and Jesus The gift of the Father is a son, but we must be ready to give our sons back to Him when it is time. The gift of the Brother is an estate, but we must be ready to give our estates back to Him when it is…

by James B. JordanJanuary 4, 1999
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Ecclesiology

Of The Church

An Exposition of Chapter XXV of the Westminster Confession of Faith I. The Catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the…

by Mark HorneDecember 5, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Critics

From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Critics , by David Gress (New York: Free Press, 1998). This book came into my hands after I had finished my series of essays on Western Civilization. It is so good that I was tempted to summarize it in…

by James B. JordanDecember 4, 1998
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American Politics

Buchanan and Free Trade

In a recent issue of the Chalcedon Report (March, 1999), R. J. Rushdoony praises Patrick Buchanan’s book The Great Betrayal (Boston: Little Brown, 1998), a defense of protectionism. Rushdoony claims that the conflict between free trade and tariffs is a religious conflict, and he is correct. Unfortunately and surprisingly, he…

by James B. JordanDecember 4, 1998
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Esther

Crisis Time: Patriarchal Prologue, Part 4

Joseph and Esther The third patriarch was Joseph, and the third phase of pre-gospel history is the Restoration. We have not spent time looking particularly at the Joseph narrative heretofore, because it is different in cast from the Abraham and Jacob ones. There is no explicit promise, fulfillment, and crisis…

by James B. JordanDecember 4, 1998

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Biblical TheologyChildren

Children's Bible

The Bible speaks of children from beginning to end, the history it tells is a history of children. To recite the story of children in Scripture would be to recite Scripture. In the beginning: Adam was born of earth and divine breath, naked as a newborn. The protoevangelium is a…

November 9, 2017

Medieval Modernity

"Modern" is an invention of the Christian Middle Ages. According to Krishan Kumar ( From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society ), " Modernus , from modo (‘recently’, ‘just now’) was a late Latin coinage on the model of hodiernus (from hodie , ‘today’). It was first used, as an antonym to…

November 8, 2017

My Temple, My Bride

The description of Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 6 employs a number of anatomical terms: The temple has a “face” (v. 3), “ribs” (vv. 5, 8), and “shoulders” (7:39). The language makes it clear that already in the OT the temple is “humaniform.” We can be more specific: The “ribs”…

November 7, 2017
Language

The Linguistic Construction of Reality

Craig Gay ( The Way of the (Modern) World ) lucidly traces a line of development from Descartes’ separation of the human subject from the world of objects, through the Cartesian and Newtonian effort to reduce science to mathematics, to the triumph of technical manipulation. At the end point, the…

November 7, 2017
Shakespeare

Truth, Love, Lies: Much Ado About Nothing

The following is an excerpt from my Brightest Heaven of Invention , published in the misty days of the mid-1990s. Claudio looks at Hero’s appearance, and concludes she is a maid, a virgin. Because of Don John’s deception, he believes that he has peeled away the deceptive outer layer, the…

November 6, 2017

Plausible Impossibility

Kathryn Schulz observes that "One of the strangest things about the human mind is that it can reason about unreasonable things. It is possible, for example, to calculate the speed at which the sleigh would have to travel for Santa Claus to deliver all those gifts on Christmas Eve. It…

November 3, 2017

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