Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the 48th year, the third month, and the fourteenth night, while I slept in my bed, I was taken in vision to Xanadu and set upon a high hill. Looking to the west, I saw a large building, surrounded with gardens and fountains, walks and gravestones, and a bell…
‘Tis the season to be informed–sometimes in gentleness, often with vigor–by a variety of Christians (and others) 1 claiming that it is wrong to celebrate Christmas. I have no desire to force anyone to celebrate Christmas against their will. Indeed, it would be insulting to the high holiday to pretend…
Part 2: The Enoch Factor Back in Open Book 21 we discussed "The Enoch Factor." Because that was several years ago (May 1994) and many people have begun reading this letter since that time, we shall return to the subject here and expand what we wrote at that time. After…
Day 6. The sixth day provides the creation of land animals and of humanity. As we saw above, the second day spills over to the first half of the third day, for only at that point did God say that it was good. Similarly, it seems that the fifth day…
During the past two decades, the "quest of the historical Jesus" has entered a new phase. The first incarnation of the quest was rudely shaken by the publication of Albert Schweitzer’s classic Quest of the Historical Jesus , easily the most devastating and funniest work of New Testament scholarship ever…
At the 1997 Biblical Horizons Summer Conference, the Rev. Jeffrey Meyers presented a series of remarkable lectures on the gospel of Mark. Among his many insightful comments, he suggested that the second gospel continues where the first gospel ends; Matthew ends with Jesus saying "Go" (Matthew 28:19), and Mark’s shows…
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The sea beast wages war against the saints (Revelation 13:7), assisted by the land beast (13:11-15), also known as the “false prophet” (16:13; 19:20; 20:10). That the land beast is a prophet gives us a big clue to what’s happening. Prophets end and initiate covenants; prophets are the sacred architects…
In the Levitical law, the priests received two particular portions of each peace offering: the “wave offering” of the breast and the “heave offering” (or better, “contribution”) of the right thigh. The purpose of this essay is to attempt to determine the reason why the second of these, the thigh,…
Robert Pogue Harrison glances at his father’s college yearbook and finds that “twelve-year-old boys looked like little adults, their faces furrowed by the depths of time” ( Juvenescence , x). We’re younger now: “the first-world face of today remains callow, even as it withers away with age, never attaining the…
Neoteny comes from two Greek words, “new” and “hold.” As Robert Pogue Harrison defines it ( Juvenescence , 18), evolutionary biology speaks of neoteny as the “persistence of fetal, larval, or juvenile features in adult organisms.” Harrison means something more broader, “a modified type of development that brings juvenile traits…
John’s description of the land beast and his work in Revelation 13:11-15 is organized in a fairly neat chiasm: A. Another beast like a lamb, speaking as a dragon, 13:11 B. He has the authority of the first beast, 13:12a C. He makes land-dwellers worship the first beast, who was…
Robert McAfee Brown summarizes The Spirit of Protestantism as “an openness to the judging and renewing activity of the living God made known in Jesus Christ.” It’s a willingness to “submit to the corrective activity of God,” and “to live at risk.” Protestantism claims that it’s only in “constant renewal…
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