Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The preceding essay has caused me to consider the possibility that the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis contains a typological prophecy of the history of Israel; that is, that the events in Abraham’s life broadly anticipate events in Israel’s history. This kind of pattern is seen in the…
by: Jeff Meyers and James Jordan In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we read of a man who had been ill for 38 years and who was lying by a pool located by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. This sheep waited, as did many other infirm people, for an…
What had been reduced to ruin by this sex, would by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. —Tertullian What is Paul saying about women and salvation…
Back in Biblical Horizons 132 I discussed the horrible abuse of the converted men of Salem/Shechem in Genesis 34. These Hivites had joined the covenant by circumcision and then were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. That, however, is not the end of their story. In Joshua 9 we find the…
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…
Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…
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A s recounted in From Conflict to Communion , jointly produced by the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the Reformation was an academic dispute that careened into a division of the church. Apart from the first four theses, Luther's 95 Theses did not state…
D aniel Everett thinks language is a tool, and has written a book about it: Language: The Cultural Tool . He develops his theory over-against the notion that language is the product of a biological “instinct.” On this Chomskyan/Pinkerian view, “language is part of our genetic endowment and that, because…
R eflecting on Daniel Craig's recent performance as Iago, Tamsin Shaw puzzles over the “Iago problem” in a secular world: “The concept of evil has fallen out of favor in our disenchanted world. Its religious and superstitious connotations are permissible in horror movies, but otherwise often deemed embarrassing. Without some…
I n a TLS retrospective on Kipling , Michael Holroyd notes the obvious: “By the time he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 he was well known as the private soldiers' poet, and had achieved fame for beating the drum on behalf of the British Empire. The British…
I n her TLS review of John Kerrigan's Shakespeare's Binding Language , Emma Smith calls attention to the liturgical and sacramental dimensions of Shakespearean oaths, contracts, and vows: “Binding in Measure emerges as deeply theological and sacramental (‘grounded in the Roman military oath of sacramentum,' as Kerrigan tells us in…
A delicious 1964 poem from Norman MacCaig ( Poems of Norman MacCaig , 165), entitled “The Smuggler”: Watch him when he opens his bulging words—justice, fraternity, freedom, internationalism, peace, peace, peace. Make it your custom to pay no heed to his frank look, his visas, his stamps and signatures. Make…
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