Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
1 Kings 17, which abruptly introduces Elijah into the history of the northern kingdom, is a carefully constructed literary unit. In its basic structure, it follows a clear exodus-return pattern. Like Jacob and his sons, Elijah was driven out of the land by a famine (vv. 1-4). In exile, Elijah…
Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and they were scoffing at Him. And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is…
In the year 3119, Ahaziah of Judah and Jehoram of Israel were both slain by Jehu as he carried out his God-appointed task of eliminating the seed and house of Ahab (2 Kings 9:13-33). Since the kings of Israel are usually counted as beginning their reign in the same year…
One of the most important developments in Biblical studies in recent years has been a movement of scholars devoted to studying the literary techniques of the Biblical writers. Tremper Longman, III of Westminster Theological Seminary has treated this movement from a Reformed perspective in his Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation…
And because [Paul] was of the same trade, he stayed with [Aquila and Priscilla] and they were working; for by trade they were tentmakers (Acts 18:3). The fact that Paul was by trade a tentmaker has usually been taken as the springboard for a discussion of whether pastors should have…
I pointed out in Chronologies and Kings Part 9 that the years of Judah’s kings are given in chronological fashion. "When we read of a Judahite king’s reign as lasting 4 years, it means that 4 years of the chronology have been given to him, and there is no chronological…
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I have commented in the past on the bizarre Eucharistic imagery that ends Isaiah 49: “And I will feed your oppressors with their own flesh, And they will become drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine; And all flesh will know that I, the LORD, am your Savior,…
Throughout the 40s of Isaiah, Yahweh promises to do something unprecedented, something new, for Israel. He will bring them from bondage - but he’s done that before. This time, he will bring them back by using Gentiles as agents of Israel’s liberation. That’s a new thing, better than the Exodus,…
Linda Colley doesn’t think that the United Kingdom can remain united. In Acts of Union and Disunion , she following Benedict Anderson’s lead in claiming that nations are Imagined Communities , formed from myths and, as Colley says, “an attractive idea of what they are.” As summed up by the…
In his TLS review of Andrew Sanders’s In the Olden Time: Victorians and the British Past , AN Wilson suggests that Dickens was representative of his age in his “open hatred of the post, and his perky lower-middle-class joy in nowadays.” Not all Victorians shared Dickens’s progressivism: “Ruskin deplored Dickens’s…
A sketch of a Jensonian critique of historical criticism of Scripture: The Bible must be understood in its historical context. In practice, this means that the Bible’s historical claims are relativized to the discoveries of ancient historical investigation, archaeology, etc. If the bricks and pottery shards say that Jericho didn’t…
The book of Genesis is neatly divided into sections by toledoth statements: “These are the generations of” or some variation. The phrase means “these are the things generated by” so and so, and the things generated are often children. But there is a variation within the book between genealogies and…
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