Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Place names become fraught with meaning by association with people and events. The name “Wittenberg” calls to mind Luther and the Reformation for Protestants and Catholics alike. Geneva has a wider range of associations, but the Reformation Wall, with its four main statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza,…
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe,…
2 Samuel 11-12, which record David’s sin with Bathsheba and its aftermath, is structured chiastically: This arrangement highlights several things about the episode. It reinforces what is obvious from even a casual reading, that the transition in the story occurs with Nathan’s confrontation of David’s sin and David’s confession. Up…
Medieval bestiaries are packed with quaintly inaccurate information about animals, birds, and other created things. Foxes and snakes are devilish critters; stags, pelicans and elephants are Christlike in their various ways. Of course, the medievals picked this up from the Bible, where bestiary observations are fairly common. “Go to the…
What do Reformational Catholicism and craft beer have in common? The question seems to beg for a punchline. Better yet, it would be pretty good clickbait for an article on Katharina von Bora’s “spirited” contribution that helped spark the Protestant Reformation. Well, this is no joke and I am certainly…
Suffering Defined Suffering happens. We witness it all around us and experience it in our lives. It often comes from forces beyond our control. Suffering is inscrutable; it strikes unexpectedly, on a bright summer day or a cold winter night. We lament and are bewildered by suffering. But we are…
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In a recent PhD dissertation from Florida State, Margaret Armstrong traces the connections between the Oxford movement and Jane Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion . Harrison “practiced a wild, emotional brand of High Churchism and that its traces linger in her letters and her autobiography and further…
I reflect on the political potency of symbolism at Canon and Culture, the web site of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Klawans ( Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple ) is disturbed by the gap between studies of biblical purity and studies of sacrifice. Mary Douglas proposed that Levitical purity was not primitive, but systematic, symbolic, and socially functional. Even those who are unconvinced by her proposals has to take Levitical purity…
Klawans helpfully reminds us of the pre-preparations for sacrifice ( Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple ). To offer an animal, an Israelite has to have one, and it has to be unblemished. Worshipers begin by being shepherds and herdsmen, and they have to be careful ones. Careful like Yahweh: “Israel’s…
In his first book, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism , Jonathan Klawans explores the complex relations of sin and impurity in biblical law and later Jewish thought. He distinguishes between “ritual defilement” that arises from unavoidable natural processes and “moral defilement” that arises from sin. In Purity, Sacrifice, and…
In his Taboo , Fritz Steiner observed that the discovery of Polynesian taboo customs was a “Protestant discovery” (50). Admitting that this was a historical accident, he still thought it worth remarking, and thought it contained a clue to 19th-century obsessions with taboo: “The problem of taboo became extraordinarily prominent…
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