Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
There is no question about the fact that the book of Deuteronomy is full of literary allusion. But there is a serious problem, even a paradox, of understanding how that allusion works. To begin with, if we assume that Deuteronomy was written by Moses — with some editorial emendations added…
Genesis and Genetics in Blade Runner 2049 The power of science fiction, and what’s positive about it, is that you’re able to experience the worst-case scenario without actually having to live it. (Actor Ryan Gosling, who plays Officer “K”) (Warning: The following analysis contains spoilers for both Blade Runner films.)…
The battle of Gog and Magog is found in Ezekiel 38-39. My purpose in this brief essay is to propound an explanation for this passage that I have not encountered in any of my commentaries, but that makes more sense to me than any other. I offer it here in…
I. Varlam Shalamov in Kolyma Tales describes his experience of the Gulag, where he spent more than a dozen of years. In a story titled The Life of Engineer Kipreev Shalamov reflects on the theme of hope in the life of a prisoner: “Hope always shackles the convict. Hope is…
Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…
And he said to me, "What do you see?" And I answered, "I see a flying scroll; its length is twenty cubits and its width ten cubits" (Zechariah 5:2). Immediately following his vision of the outpouring of the Spirit upon the restoration community (4:1-14), Zechariah saw a flying scroll. The…
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For postmoderns, there is a close link between the timeless self of ancient and modern thought and the primacy of the gaze. The exaltation of the visual that Foucault attacks is expressed quite openly in an essay by Hans Jonas, “The Nobility of Sight,” who describes some of the philosophical…
A bit of nonsense from several years ago. Scene 1 Mr Faust sitting in a big chair, with Little Faust on his lap, reading. Mrs Faust sitting in another chair, knitting or something. Mr Faust: And I heard him exclaim As he drove out of sight Merry Christmas to all…
INTRODUCTION The Roman Catholic church teaches many false things about Mary the mother of Jesus, but in reaction Protestants have sometimes simply ignored her. Like Joseph, she is a model of discipleship; and she is a living portrait of the church, the people in whom Christ takes shape (cf. Galatians…
Michel Foucault suggests that the modern exalation of sight, the gaze, particularly the medical gaze, is associated with death: “That which hides and envelops, the curtain of night over truth, is, paradoxically, life; and death, on the contrary, opens up to the light of day the black coffer of the…
The Western quest for “personal identity” rests, in part, on a confusion of different senses of the term. We recognize that there are degrees of sameness among things: Identical twins are never strictly identical. Paul Ricoeur has pointed out, further, that we tend to confuse two senses of “identity,” which…
Grading several papers on Esther, it occurs to me that the book is more about Mordecai’s exalation than about Esther. Esther’s exalation to queen is part of the means by which Mordecai and the Jews are ultimately saved, and the story climaxes with Mordecai at the right hand of the…
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