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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T he genealogies of Chronicles begin with “Adam,” and the ancestors of the Chronicler's people Israel appear only after a half-chapter of names. Yet the Chronicler, like other Old Testament writers, considers Israel the “firstborn” nation (Exod. 4:23). As Scott Hahn puts it ( The Kingdom of God as Liturgical…
J esus can be an embarrassment, not least to disciples. Peter Brown points to an example in his recent The Ransom of the Soul , Jesus's statement to the rich young ruler to “go and sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in…
I n his stimulating meditation on The Dominion of the Dead , Robert Pogue Harrison observes, following Fustel de Coulanges, that “the ancient house and in its turn the ancient city, were founded upon such sepulchers” (26). Even empires are so founded. Witness The Aeneid : “After the destruction of…
W hatever happened to post-structuralism? asks Terry Eagleton in the TLS . Born in the latter part of the 1960s in reaction to the structural linguistics of Saussure and the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss, post-structuralism presented itself as a liberation movement: “Structures were to be unmasked as less stable than…
Y ahweh promised Abraham a land and a seed to plant in it. He planted a vineyard and it filled the land. Then He drive them from the land, scattered them out among the Gentiles. “Cast your bread on the water,” Solomon says. “For you will find it after many…
1 Chronicles 9:1 sounds like closure. Israel's genealogies are enrolled, and the Chronicler cites the source of his information, the book of the Kings of Israel. Judah is off in Babylonian exile because of her unfaithfulness. Yet the text moves on, and the genealogy isn't yet done. After the end,…
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