Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
I'm afraid of messing up. Not just of messing up in general, but of messing this up—the big This that is the story that is my life, the story that God is attempting to tell with me as His material. The question casts its shadow over all my decisions. Can…
Jesus’ letter to Pergamum mentions Balaam and Balak (Revelation 2:14), and that is a signal that the whole message is running along the lines of Numbers 22-25. The death of the high priest is a sacrificial moment in the life of Israel. According to the rules of the cities of…
As you come to be joined in marriage today, I want to take a moment to focus on one important dimension of what it means to be married as Christians: that is as those who know Jesus and are being made into His likeness. This is a glorious day, full…
When Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, saying, “Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.” Jesus saith unto him, “I will come and heal him.” The centurion answered and said, “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest…
Philosophers have measured mountains, Fathom'd the depths of seas, of states, and kings, Walk'd with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains But there are two vast, spacious things, The which to measure it doth more behove: Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love. The Agonie –…
The third chapter of Luke famously opens with a list of mighty men, seven mighty men, potential heroes of the Mediterranean world. Beginning with Tiberius Caesar and Pontius Pilate, passing on to Herod the Tetrarch and his brothers, and ending with two High Priests, Luke says that the word of…
Showing page 143 of 309
Showing page 5 of 43
Ancient Near Eastern texts often refer to a god abandoning his house, the temple, sometimes in outrage over the evils of the people, sometimes because the people’s time has come to an end. Whenever the god leaves, the house and the city where it’s housed is left unprotected. Enemies come…
“Beyond the visual paradigm” was the challenge issued by the organizers of the symposium that eventually produced the volume Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses , edited by Shane Butler and Alex Purves. In place of a visual paradigm, they wanted to offer a “synaesthetic reading of the ancient world” (2).…
Political histories of the Religious Right miss the underlying ferment that gave rise to the movement, argues Molly Worthen in her recent Apostles of Reason . The eruption was more fundamentally an eruption of tensions within Evangelicalism itself. Worthen argues that Evangelicals are united by three dominant questions: The reconciliation…
Isaiah uses the verb “be silent” ( chashah ) seven times. Nearly every time, it is Yahweh who is silent. He has restrained Himself until He cannot hold it in (42:14, 2x), keeping silent so long that Judah began to think they could get away with anything (57:11). For Zion’s…
Yahweh’s Servant will rejoice and won’t go silent until: A. Goes forth B. as brightness C. her [Zion’s] righteousness C’. and her salvation ( yeshu’a ) B’. as a torch A’. burns. Zion’s righteousness and rescue will be light flashing into her darkness, like the brightness ( nogah ) of…
John and Gloria Ben-Daniel argue in their The Apocalypse in the Light of the Temple that the temple serves as the “organizing principle” of John’s Apocalypse (4). The background of the book, then, is not Roman persecution of the church but “the destruction of the second Temple in AD 70…
Showing page 594 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
