Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I thought it might be good to put this up here, since it is 14 years old, and itself reflects earlier discussion. From this you can see that we at BH have been considering this notion for quite some time. Clearly, the last word has not been said. — James…
Hopefully, my commentary on James will be out later this year. But here are a few chiasms for your consideration. I think the James 5 chiasm orginally came from Doug Jordan. The entire book of James is focused on how the pastors and leaders (“brothers”) of the church use their…
In my first post I noted that the parables of Jesus were not simply illustrative stories. They are really nothing like the kind of simple, homely illustrations that preachers often use to explain difficult concepts to their congregations. Just to be clear: there’s nothing wrong with illustrating one’s sermonic statements.…
Ephesians is often treated as a pure type example of the Pauline method that “the indicative preceds the imperative.” But what Paul does first is pray . Simply reading verse 3 and following involves readers in a prayer of thanksgiving to God–and much more so for those listening to the…
Yesterday, I took part with my oldest son in a church-sponsored city outreach project (not because I’m especially prone to such behavior but because my son has a Boy Scout requirement that this would help him meet). Before we were sent out on our various jobs, the leader gave a…
There is a scene in Prince Caspian , the second in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia that helps explain why it is we have four Gospels, that is four accounts of the Good News of Jesus Christ—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is the account of Lucy’s longed-for experience…
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Greeks are adolescents; Achilles is an overgrown hyper-sensitive hyper-muscled teenager. A student points out that this applies also to humor: Greek humor is adolescent humor. Consider Aristophanes, the only extant Old Comedian. Case closed.
A Second Dream, 1 Kings 9:1-28 INTRODUCTION Solomon?s great building project was the house of Yahweh, which included the temple, the palace, and the government buildings (1 Kings 6-7). But Solomon also built a number of other buildings, fortresses and cities. 1 Kings 9 describes both Yahweh?s response to the…
Commenting on Deuteronomy 30:9ff in his new translation of the Pentateuch, Robert Alter offers the following comment on “Who will go up for us to the heavens, etc”: “The Deuteronomist, having given God’s teaching a local place and habitation in a text available to all, proceeds to reject the older…
A guest on Ken Myers’ Mars Hill audio magazine discusses the humor of The Ladykillers . What, he asks, are we laughing at when we see the plots of criminals return on their own heads? He suggests that we are laughing at the folly of humanity, and at the way…
Doug Jones suggests the following, promising Trinitarian account of the quadriga: Literal - Father (origins) Allegorical - Son (obvious enough) Anagogical - Spirit (completion) That of course leaves the tropological, but this has to do with the formation of the believer. In a Trinitarian perspective, the tropological points to the…
1 Kings 8:2 Like the Christian calendar, Israel?s festival calendar did not cover the whole of the year. It began with Passover in the first month of the liturgical year, went through Pentecost in the third month, and climaxed with a series of feasts in the seventh month: the feast…
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