Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
This month we begin to set down in order comments on all the calendrical and chronological statements in the Pentateuch (Genesis – Deuteronomy), gathering into one place all the fruits of our labors in this area. 1. The Days of Genesis 1 Despite the confusion and the tergiversations surrounding the…
Donald Wesley Patten, Catastrophism and the Old Testament: The Mars-Earth Conflicts (Pacific Meridian Publishing Co., 1988), reviewed by James B. Jordan. In this book, Donald Patten contends that the planet Mars originally had an eccentric orbit that brought it into near proximity to the earth a number of times in…
Last month we began a survey and review of Centuries of Darkness by Peter James. 1 The thesis of this book is that the dark ages that supposedly happened all over the Mediterranean world between about 1100 and 800 B.C. never actually happened, and that these dark ages, as well…
As we consider the Age of the Law, which begins with the public enthronement of Yahweh (the Second Person of God; the Son; the Word) on Mount Sinai and then in the Tabernacle, we need to consider the Ten Words. These are generally called the “Ten Commandments,” but that is…
Here, I begin presenting material and research that will, God willing, find eventual publication as Through New Eyes, Volume II. In Through New Eyes (part I) I sought in a general way to explain some of the symbolism and imagery of the Bible, showing that it is through such symbolism…
In 1971 there appeared a privately published book dealing with the problems surrounding the chronology of Egypt as it relates to the Bible: The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications , by Donovan A. Courville. 1 At the time, Dr. Courville (Ph.D., Chemistry) was emeritus professor of Bio-chemistry at the School…
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I n an 1881 article , F.W. Farrar examined the case for Nero as the sea beast of Revelation 13. Many contemporary scholars dismiss this because they believe that Revelation was written decades after Nero. Farrar makes a circumstantial and exegetical case for the identification, and in the process provides…
I n a 1977 Daedalus article on “ The Family and the City ,” French historian Philippe Aries argued that “the real roots of the present domestic crisis lie not in our families, but in our cities.” As cities “deterioriated” and urban culture weakened, “the omnipotent, omnipresent family took upon…
P salm 87 is a hymn to Zion. The name “Zion” occurs four times, and the Psalm declares Yahweh's love for Zion (v. 1), the glory of Zion as city of God (v. 2), the joy that fills Zion (v. 6). It could be a “nationalistic” hymn to Israel's ancient…
I n her contribution to The Peace of God , Amy Remensnyder examines the eleventh-century crackdown on simony, clerical marriage and unchastity, and the clergy's involvement in war. These were characterized as pollutions of the clergy and the church, and the rules were framed as purity prohibitions. Gregory VII denounced…
A mericans have often justified American order and American exceptionalism by invoking “the myth of nature,” write Robert Hughes and C. Leonard Allen in Illusions of Innocence (205). They “first employed this myth to justify freedom from tyranny. But they soon began equating nature with particular dimensions of national life…
I n a review of Jacob Milgrom's Anchor Bible Leviticus commentary, Jonathan Klawans provides a helpful summary of the achievement of Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger : Against especially Robertson Smith and Frazer, Douglas argued that avoidance behaviors could no longer be dismissed as something inherently or distinctly primitive. Douglas…
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