Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Book of Genesis contains eleven distinct markers readily acknowledged as the toledot formula. 1 Commentator Nahum Sarna counts the ’elleh toledot to be “…one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Book of Genesis”. 2 Among translations, the noun is variously translated as “generations” (ESV, KJV), “records of the generations”…
The answer that immediately comes to mind to the question in the title is Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah. He was conceived during the extension of life that God granted Hezekiah in response to his ardent prayer on his sick bed (2 Kings 20:1-11, 21:1). His reign is summarized in…
Back in 2019, on a whim, I sketched out a setting for a modern fantasy story: a single coffee shop that is simultaneously present in multiple cities throughout the world: “...you know the one. Books by local authors, brochures for a walking tour of the city’s outdoor sculpture, a poetry…
Peter O’Brien’s translation of Colossians 4:2 surprised me: “Persevere in prayer as you watch for the Lord’s return, and be thankful.” 1 What is surprising about that? Well, none of my English translations mentioned “the Lord’s return” — nor does the Greek text! Translated literally, the verse just says: “In…
I Natural Law This is a brief (well, briefer than it could be) first attempt at responding to a very small section of Stephen Wolfe’s recent book The Case for Christian Nationalism . It’s partial, deeply incomplete, and does not at all address the book as a whole; it is…
The scuttlebutt of the last hundred years would tell us that Albert Einstein was a horrible husband, Winston Churchill was a racist, Mother Theresa was a hypocrite, and Caravaggio a murderer. From Benjamin Britten’s boys to Gandhi’s girls, it can be depressing and confusing to hear about people of great…
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It sure seems that the story of Joseph is a typological foreshadowing of the life of Jesus. Joseph is hated by his brothers; turned over to Gentiles; falsely accused; thrown into pit and prison; raised up, finally set on a throne, from which he gathers and distributes bread. Of course,…
Jock Young ( Vertigo of Late Modernity ) discerns two sorts of “othering” in contemporary life: “the first is a conservative demonisation which projects negative attributes on the other and thereby grants positive attributes to oneself The second, very common yet rarely recognised, is a liberal othering where the other…
In several dense paragraphs in The Fragmented World of the Social , Axel Honneth describes the Gyorgy Lukacs's analysis of the fragmentation caused by capitalist society and the romantic reaction. There is, for starters, the fragmentation of the human being himself, induced by the capitalist separation of the worker from…
In his little book, Alone Again , Zygmunt Bauman summarizes his characteristic themes: We live in a liquid world, nothing permanent, nothing solid, nothing predictable. Typically pungent, Bauman points to “the overall tendency to dismantle, deregulate and dissipate the once solid and relatively lasting frames in which the concerns and…
Jeremiah 46 is an oracle against Egypt, which, like Judah, is threatened by the advancing forces of Babylon. In the space of four verses (20-23), Jeremiah runs through a dizzying series of metaphors. Egypt is a pretty heifer (v. 20), and Nebuchadnezzar's army is a “horsefly” that is going to…
The late Jock Young observes in his Vertigo of Late Modernity that our period is characterized by “a combination of factors, some long existing yet unique in their combination, others pre-existent yet transformed in the present period. The impact revolves around three axes, the disembeddedness of everyday life, the awareness…
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