Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Building of the Temple Solomon began work on the Temple in the second month of his fourth year. This was the year 2993, a sabbath year. He finished in the eighth month of his eleventh year, the year 3000, also a sabbath. (1 Ki. 6:1, 38). This is said…
The Bible expresses its chronology not only in sequences of years, but also in sequences of sabbath years and jubilees. This enables us to make a cross-check of our chronology, and when we find apparent problems, to refine it. If our chronology is right, we should find some significant correlations…
Adele Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative Sheffield, England: Almond Press, 1983. This volume is the ninth in the "Bible and Literature Series" under the general editorship of David M. Gunn. According to its author, who teaches Hebrew at the University of Maryland, the book is an effort to…
V. Propp’s classic work Morphology of the Folktale (University of Texas, 1968) argues that one of the basic structures of folk literature is "lack, lack liquidated." A king sets out to look for a wife, and the tale ends with a wedding. Often, the hero sets out on some business…
Luke’s gospel begins and ends in the temple. It opens with Gabriel’s annunciation to the priest Zacharias (whose name, appropriately, means "Yahweh remembers") of the coming of a forerunner. Zacharias is performing priestly service at the time. The book ends with the joyful worship of a new priesthood in the…
Last time we arrived at the year A.M. 3960 as the date for the inauguration of the New Creation through the death, resurrection, ascension, and session of Christ, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. We also saw that this is most likely the year of Paul’s conversion. Fourteen years…
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Trinitarian theology blossomed in English theology in the post-Reformation period, evidenced by the creative development of the vestigia trinitatis . During the seventeenth century, though, Trinitarian theology began to contract and wither. According to Philip Dixon ( Nice and Hot Disputes ), there were two dynamics at work. First, Trinitarian…
1 Chronicles begins with a list of 13 names, from Adam to Japheth. From Genesis 10, we know that the list is broken into two lists, 10 + 3. The first ten names mark generations from Adam to Noah; the list of three names are all from the same generation,…
Patricia Owens summarizes her recent Economy of Force in a symposium at The Disorder of Things . Her book is a history of modern counterinsurgency, but that history has much broader implications for the history of political thought and scholarship on international relations. As Owens puts it, “The book is…
Robert Taft ( “Eastern Presuppositions” and Western Liturgical Reform ) credits the Melkite patriarch and bishops with exercising a disproportionate influence on the direction of reform at Vatican II, due to their “remarkable imaginative and universal vision.” They were the first to state that the council should avoid definitions and…
Marcia Pally's Commonwealth and Covenant is a study of the “economics, politics, and theologies of relationality.” She works through these topics using the categories of “separability” and “situatedness.” Separability is “the ability to leave one's place and develop oneself differently from past and neighbors” (3). She thinks that the contemporary…
“In 2010, Americans had total debt outstanding of $52.4 trillion, more than three-and-a-half times the country's gross domestic product,” writes Rowena Olegario in The Engine of Enterprise (1). Over $13 trillion is household debt, $24.5 is business debt, and 24% or $12.4 trillion is government debt, mostly federal debt. Each…
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