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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Departures are funny things in the Bible. No one ever completely leaves. Moses dies, but Joshua, a new Moses, replaces him. Elijah flies to heaven in a chariot of fire, but Elisha is left behind, filled with the spirit of Elijah. Jesus says, I am going away, and in the…
Since 1900, it’s been unavailable but before that, “Christ’s foreskin was one of the most popular relics in Christendom” (David Farley, AN Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town ) Catherine of Siena said she wore the foreskin as a wedding ring, being a…
Users of LSD during the 60s were not just out for a joy ride. They were the vanguard of a new race. Jay Stevens says ( Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream , xiii-xiv): “the hippies were an attempt to push evolution, to jump the species toward a higher…
The point has been made by many, but few have made it as concisely as Ivan Illich in Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health . Writing in the 1970s, he noted that “during the last century doctors have affected epidemics no more profoundly than did priests during earlier times. Epidemics…
We think science is objective. But scientific objectivity has a history, and is a fairly recent arrival as a scientific aspiration. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison observe in Objectivity (17), “Objectivity has not always define science. Nor is objectivity the same as truth or certainty, and it is younger than…
American marriage is unique, argues Andrew Cherlin ( The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today , 9-10), because American marriage marries individualism and marriage: “Family life in America comprises both cultural models - marriage and individualism. Each is part of the cultural tool kit .…
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