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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Studies

Is Abraham’s Life a Type?

The preceding essay has caused me to consider the possibility that the life of Abraham as recounted in Genesis contains a typological prophecy of the history of Israel; that is, that the events in Abraham’s life broadly anticipate events in Israel’s history. This kind of pattern is seen in the…

by James B. JordanMay 5, 2001
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Hermeneutics

Thirty-Eight Years by the Sheep Pool

by: Jeff Meyers and James Jordan In the fifth chapter of John’s gospel we read of a man who had been ill for 38 years and who was lying by a pool located by the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem. This sheep waited, as did many other infirm people, for an…

by Jeff MeyersDecember 5, 2000
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Biblical Horizons

How Are Women Saved?

What had been reduced to ruin by this sex, would by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. —Tertullian What is Paul saying about women and salvation…

by Jeff MeyersOctober 5, 2000
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Jeremiah

The Return of Hamor

Back in Biblical Horizons 132 I discussed the horrible abuse of the converted men of Salem/Shechem in Genesis 34. These Hivites had joined the covenant by circumcision and then were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. That, however, is not the end of their story. In Joshua 9 we find the…

by James B. JordanOctober 4, 2000
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Biblical Horizons

Abram’s 318 Men

Genesis 14:14 says that Abram mustered his trained men, “born in his house,” to rescue Lot, and gives their number as 318. It is clear that the precise number is provided for some reason, but what is it? S. Gevirtz notes that 318 is the sum of all the prime…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 2000
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Hermeneutics

153 Large Fish

Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11) This is one of those texts in the Bible that many people puzzle over. It is not a puzzle…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 2000

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American Politics

House Divided Stands?

Philip Terzian isn't much disturbed by the tumult in the Republican Party. He concedes that the Party is going through some changes, whose outcome remains to be seen: "The coalition that propelled Donald Trump into the White House may be a harbinger of the party’s future, or it might have…

December 8, 2017

Death and the Community

In his Death, Burial, and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity , Jon Davies attends to the communal significance of the deaths of biblical patriarchs. He writes, "Jacob is gathered ‘unto his people,' not explicitly unto his God. On the orders of his son Joseph, Jacob was embalmed (a rare…

December 8, 2017

Rough Trade

Julie Bindel's study of The Pimping of Prostitution takes a sustained, unrelenting look behind the veil of what's euphemistically called "sex work." According to the TLS reviewer , Bindel's study is based on "interviews with fifty current or former sex workers in thirty-five countries, from New Zealand to rural India,…

December 8, 2017

Sociology and Common Knowledge

"We encounter reality only if we approach it on all the paths which we, as creatures, can tread," writes Rosenstock-Huessy ( In the Cross of Reality , 230). He's commending his quadrilateral cross of reality, arguing that we must pursue the fourfold path of "the soul, of reason, culture, and…

December 8, 2017

Before the Two Cultures

CP Snow's famously complained about the divergence between "two cultures" of humanism and science. Among Romantic poets, the humanist resistance to science is best exemplified by Blake. As Algis Valiunas observes , Blake's "unflattering" painting of Newton depicts him as "a consummate specimen of a particular human type, and it…

December 8, 2017
Poetry

For Easy Poetry

"Once upon a time," writes Anthony Madrid , "there were two traditions in Anglophone poetry. On the one hand, there was poetry that was completely easy to understand and whose elegance depended on translucent phrases and straightforward sentiments. On the other hand, there was the hard stuff: poetry where the…

December 8, 2017

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