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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The American university purports to be an institution dedicated to dispassionate inquiry and the pursuit of wisdom. Since the 1960s, many Americans have identified universities with anti-American radicalism, sexual libertinism, and moral relativism. That is certainly part of the crisis of American higher education. Less publicly, though, scientific and technical…
From the early centuries through the Reformation and beyond, Christian thinkers distinguished between violence and just acts of force. Justin argued that every “honourable person” would agree that “rulers should give their decision as having followed not violence and tyranny but piety and philosophy” ( First Apology , 2). Tertullian…
In Milbank’s view, Augustine violates his own privative doctrine of evil, which gives no “ontological purchase to dominium , or power for its own sake,” when he allows that punishment might take a purely positive form. For Milbank, “in any coercion, however mild and benignly motivated, there is still present…
While eschewing Marcionism, Eric Siebert attempts to distinguish between the textual and the actual God and argues that “ some Old Testament portrayals of God do not accurately reflect God’s character” ( Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God ). But his overt selectivity leads him to split…
In a 2004 article in Word & World , Terence Fretheim claims that several texts of the Old Testament attribute violence (Heb. hamas ) to God. Only one is a convincing example. In Job 19:7, Job cries out against the “violence” done to him. He has just complied that Yahweh…
Christina Rosetti wrote a number of books dealing with biblical and spiritual themes. In one, Letter and Spirit , she suggests that it is “a genuine though not a glaring breach of the Second commandment, when instead of learning the lesson plainly set down for us in Holy Writ, we…
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