Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If you’re a preacher looking for good commentaries on Ezra, you’ll struggle. Certainly to find ones that wrestle in good detail with the text. And certainly ones that don’t cost you an arm and a leg. There’s a good bit more for Nehemiah, which is odd, as the two are…
Quick thought experiment: try to pretend you’ve never read 1 John before. Read 1:1-6. Go ahead; I’ll wait. Now, on to v. 7: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with ______….” What word would you expect in that blank, based…
In my work as a Bible translator, I was recently checking our translation team’s draft of Genesis 8:8, which says of Noah (translating the Hebrew quite literally): And he sent out the dove from with him to see: had the waters lessened from upon the face of the ground? Part…
Just in case a reader may not know Weinberg, he is a theoretical physicist and the winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1979, as well as countless other prizes for his research. He is also a prolific, lucid, and captivating writer. If you want to read something on…
Colossians 1:15-20 is a famous passage in Paul’s epistles because it is a succinct and powerful poem. It appears even to have been a hymn. Given the uniquely Pauline language — “reconciliation” is a term used only by Paul — it should not seem odd to attribute the poem/hymn to…
Stalker (1979) is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky based on Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. It shows a day from the life of a stalker, a man who enters the so-called "Zone", an Alien landing site, where he leads people to a room that grants people’s innermost desires, which…
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A recent article in the widely read journal, Radiation Protection Dosimetry (150 [2012] 278-82) provides one more reason, as if one were needed, to grow a beard. The abstract reads: “A dosimetric technique has been employed to establish the amount of erythemal ultraviolet radiation (UVR) protection provided by facial hair…
After a series of exceedingly sensitive and profound meditations on Genesis 1-3, in which John Paul II highlights the contemporaneity and wisdom of Genesis, he suddenly turns into a nineteenth century liberal when he starts talking about sex in the Torah ( Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology…
I muse on the religion of sports underlying modern and ancient Olympics at http://www.firstthings.com/ this morning.
How did reciprocal economies become modern economies, dominated so thoroughly by the market? Hans van Wees ( Reciprocity in Ancient Greece , 48) says we don’t really know, and adds that “the introduction of money . . . turns out not to make as much difference as one might have…
In his contribution to Reciprocity in Ancient Greece (36-7), Hans van Wees asks whether a “reciprocal economy” is subject to the law of supply and demand. His answer is, Yes and No: “When initiating a reciprocal relationship, one might go where the goods one intends to give away are most…
Anthropologists claim that in “gift societies” objects exchanged never become the private property of the recipient. We know this even in our own society: We would never think to use a soup tureen from grandma to feed the cat. Gifts impose an obligation to honor the giver. Things bought do…
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