Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
After Elijah’s battered and depressed howling in the wilderness it must have seemed like the new prophet came eating and drinking. Which is a pattern we see again in the New Testament—John is explicitly identified with Elijah (Luke 1.17, Matthew 11.14), howling the truth in the wilderness that the people…
Reading Robert Conquest’s biography of Stalin 1 has opened new lines of meditation on Paul’s command in Colossians 3:9. But before turning to that, let me briefly indicate what Paul is not saying. He is not saying that there is no such thing as righteous deception, such as Jael practiced…
You won’t find wild lions today in Israel. But lions used to range much more widely than they do now, and in biblical times they were a menace that shepherds in Israel had to contend with. David did as a shepherd boy, and Amos—who “ was among the sheepbreeders of…
I would like to remedy a flaw for English speakers in the book of Genesis. A flaw that may seem innocuous, but we must remember where the devil lives...in the details. If we are to fear the Lord, it behooves our translation committees to ensure that the fearfulness of God…
While reading at my son’s baseball game this week, a mom from our school approached me and asked if I was reading Dante. I wasn’t, but our sons are both reading Divine Comedy in their sophomore literature class, so it was a reasonable question. What unfolded was a quick conversation…
In the first two essays in this series, I addressed the question of how the nations would learn about Israel’s Torah, in the second essay especially emphasizing the aesthetic aspects of Israel’s testimony. For we naturally wonder: How would people in Mesopotamia or Egypt, not to mention the rest of…
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Marsden again: “The rise and fall of the adaptations . . . represents a pivotal moment in literary and cultural history, testifying to the new focus on language which would soon infiltrate all aspects of eighteenth-century thought. When concern for Shakespeare as text replaces emphasis on Shakespeare as performance, even…
Foucault argued in his essay on the development of the “author-function” that the modern conception of authorship evolved as authors came to be figured as sacred figures, holders of legal ownership of texts and words, which in turn conveyed “privilege or sanctity” to the text itself. Jean Marsden says that…
In a study of adaptations of Shakespeare in the 17th and 18th century, Jean Marsden argues that there was an inversion in the approach to Shakespeare sometime in the 18th century. Prior to that time, Shakespeare’s words were changed and modified, while the contexts of his plays remained the same;…
Notes for my lecture at the upcoming Moscow Ministerial Conference. INTRODUCTION I was assigned a lecture on Shakespeare and pop culture, and I’m almost going to do that. Not that Shakespeare and pop culture is an irrelevancy. There are a variety of ways to handle this question, all valuable. We…
1) The relationship between the world (KOSMOS) and desire is complex. Verse 16 indicates that desires and boastfulness make up the contents of the world – the desire of flesh, eyes, and boastfulness of life constitute the “all that is in the world” (PAN TO EN TO KOSMO). More on…
1 John 2:13-14 twice says that groups within the church “know the one from the beginning.” That is a perfectly fine way to translate it, but the Greek has TON AP’ ARXES, “the from the beginning.” To whom is this phrase referring? The more awkward translation suggests the possibility that…
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