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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Amid the swirl of sexual harassment charges, Claire Dederer asks what we ought to do with the art of monstrous men. It's not a side issue. Many of the geniuses in the history of art have been monstrous. Dederer even ventures that monstrosity is inherent in artistic achievement. You need…
Things are not as they should be, and Judah calls for Yahweh to descend to help. Rip the heavens, shake the earth, boil the sea; tear the three-story house of the universe apart brick by brick, but come down to help! (Isaiah 64). Judah has come to acknowledge that she’s…
The following is snipped from my essay in The Words of the Wise are like Goads . The imagery of Ecclesiastes 7 hooks back to the imagery of Lady Folly from the early chapters of Proverbs, the exhortation to delight in the woman you love leans toward the Song of…
Calum Carmichael is one of the most inventive biblical scholars around. He has made his career with studies of the interaction of narrative and law in the Old Testament, arguing, for instance, that the Levitical rules of consanguinity represent judgments on the practice of the patriarchs. It's not entirely persuasive,…
The bulk of the Chronicler's account of the reign of Abijah (2 Chronicles 13) is taken up with a long speech by the king, delivered before a battle with Jeroboam of Israel. Standing on Mount Zemaraim ("Twin Peaks") he calls Israel to return to Yahweh with a "Shema": "Hear me,…
For some, the "two kingdoms" political theology of Luther and Calvin is the essence of Reformation political theology. Francis Oakley argues ( Watershed of Modern Politics ) that it was an unstable early position that later Reformers couldn't sustain and eventually abandoned. Luther claimed that Christians existed "between the two…
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