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Biblical Studies

Music and Hermeneutics

From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify. A…

by James B. JordanNovember 28, 1996
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Biblical Horizons

Of Preaching and Newspapers

Sermons are rarely more tiresome than when they strive for relevance. Drawing from the latest headlines transforms the preacher into a one-man MacLaughlin Group, a Crossfire without the cross though perhaps with some of the fire, and leave the congregation thinking, "If I wanted Meet the Press, I could have…

by Peter LeithartNovember 27, 1996
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Beer

Concerning Wine and Beer

Part One: The Old Testament “Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the drunkard is from the Devil” Increase Mather in Wo to Drunkards (1673). 1. The “wine”…

by Jeff MeyersNovember 5, 1996
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Jeremiah

Jeremiah 52:28-30

28. These are the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away into exile: in the 7th year 3023 Jews. 29. In the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar 832 persons from Jerusalem. 30. In the 23rd year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile 745 Jewish people; there were 4600…

by James B. JordanOctober 28, 1996
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Revelation

Concerning the Nations

Revelation 21:24 says, concerning the light shining from the New Jerusalem, "and the nations will walk by her light, and the kings of the land will bring their glory into her." Similarly, Revelation 22:2 says, concerning the Tree of Life, that "the leaves of the tree were for the healing…

by James B. JordanOctober 28, 1996
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Jeremiah

Countdown to Exile II: Rebellion Against God’s Order

Jeremiah and the Beginning of Jehoiakim’s Reign Now comes Jeremiah, at the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, with similar words (Jeremiah 26). Harken to God’s law, he said, or else God will destroy the Temple the same way He sent the Philistines to tear down the Tabernacle at Shiloh (Jeremiah 26:6;…

by James B. JordanOctober 28, 1996

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One Voice

We can’t all see exactly the same thing at the same time. No matter how close I press toward someone else, the perspective of my eyes is never identical to the perspective of another person. We cannot see through another’s eyes. Sight is an individualizing mode of knowledge. Hearing is…

July 20, 2005

Arousal and order

In Bed and Board , Robert Farrar Capon points out how disordered sexual relations are deeply engrained in contemporary life. Capon wrote the book 40 years ago, but what he says is more true today even than it was then. Men, he says, “come to marriage after years of being…

July 16, 2005

The Gothic

Mark Edmundson examines the pervasive influence of Gothic themes not only in popular entertainments (horror movies, computer games, etc) but also in contemporary real-life life. He suggests that the evening news presents a Gothicized world, a world of unknowable threats and horrors that we cannot escape. Writing in the late…

July 16, 2005

Hamann’s hermeneutic

Hamann allegorized a hermeneutical principle of Jer 38: “We all find ourselves in such a swampy prison as the one in which Jeremiah found himself. Old rags served as ropes to pull him out; to them he owed his gratitude for saving him. Not their appearance, but the services they…

July 15, 2005

Hamann’s hermeneutic

Hamann allegorized a hermeneutical principle of Jer 38: “We all find ourselves in such a swampy prison as the one in which Jeremiah found himself. Old rags served as ropes to pull him out; to them he owed his gratitude for saving him. Not their appearance, but the services they…

July 15, 2005
Philosophy

Death of the sign

Still on Pickstock on Derrida. Famously, Derrida says that speech dies with its author, the sound fading on the air. Writing survives. But he claim that speech is always under erasure makes the prior assumption that death and life are mutually exclusive territories, that it is impossible for the sign…

July 14, 2005

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