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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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Exporting African Religion

Jacob Olupona ( African Religions , 118-9) tells the remarkable story of Rev. Sunday Adelaja and the Word of Faith Bible Church of Kiev: “Adelaja, a Nigerian, initially and somewhat to his dismay found himself in Belarus (then part of the Soviet Union) on a scholarship to study journalism. While…

August 6, 2015

Cosmopolitan Paul

Karin Neutel's A Cosmopolitan Ideal is a detailed contextual study of Paul's declaration that in Christ there is no more Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. “Contextual” here means that Neutel examines the use of these and similar contrasts in Greco-Roman and Jewish texts of the first…

August 6, 2015

Supplication

F. S. Naiden is making a career in classics by unsettling settled academic opinion about ancient religion and ritual. He did it in the 2012 Smoke Signals for the Gods , which reintroduced the gods into modern accounts of Greek sacrifice. Earlier (I'm reading Naiden in reverse order!), in Ancient…

August 5, 2015

Utopian Modernism

Modernism was born in Vienna at the turning point from the 19th to the 20th century. On most accounts, the climate of fin de siecle Vienna was dark and brooding breeding ground for modernist nightmares. Without denying that dimension of Viennese modernism, Kevin Karnes argues in A Kingdom Not of…

August 5, 2015

In the Temple

In his monograph on The Throne Motif in the Book of Revelation (228-9), Lazlo Gallusz lays out a helpful macro-outline of Revelation, which shows the alternation of temple scenes and visions: Temple scene 1, 1:9-20 (Jesus among lampstands) Vision 1, 2:1-3:22 Temple scene 2, 4:1-5:14 (heavenly temple) Vision 2, 6:1-8:1…

August 5, 2015

The Fall, Basari Style

In his very short introduction to African Religions , Jacob Olupona summarizes the creation-and-fall myth of the Basari of Northern Togo and Ghana: “A creator god named Unumbotte who makes man, a snake, and an antelope; he then places them on unrefined earth with one tree. Unumbotte gives them seeds…

August 5, 2015

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