Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Summary : The Bible is a multi-faceted text. As a result, it can fruitfully be analyzed in many ways. Pace, context, flow, imagery: all of these aspects of the Biblical text are significant and instructive. Here, by way of illustration, I analyze Gen. 38 in a range of different ways,…
Summary: The Bible is a multi-faceted text. As a result, it can fruitfully be analysed in many ways. Pace, context, flow, imagery: all of these aspects of the Biblical text are significant and instructive. Here, by way of illustration, I analyse Gen. 38 in a range of different ways, and…
The closing chapters of the Bible bring to fulfillment the mission inaugurated in the opening chapters of the Bible: the dwelling place of God expands to fill the entire new creation. The story of Scripture concludes having achieved God’s original intent for His people in the Garden of Eden, and…
Oddly, the nature of pre -modern economies plays a central role in today’s policy debate over economic globalization and neo-liberalism. Analysts take ancient non-market economies as the standard against which to measure the economic and social effects of the market system. Scholars compare the distribution of economic goods and services…
In part one of this essay, I mentioned that the story of Zacchaeus includes not only many details that point to other passages in Luke, but also details that point to the Old Testament, though we might not initially think of them. The first detail I have in mind is…
The story of Zacchaeus includes numerous interesting details that link this story with others in the Gospel of Luke. There are also details that tie the story of Zacchaeus to the Old Testament in ways that we might not initially take note of. In the Gospel of Luke, the story…
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Scholars have long speculated on the astronomical imagery of Revelation. Astronomy plays a big role in Austin Farrer’s Rebirth of Images , and Bruce Malina has written a couple of books on the subject ( Social Science Commentary on Revelation ; On the Genre and Message of Revelation ). He…
Who are the horsemen riding the white, red, black, and green horses that are summoned when the Lamb breaks the first four seals? (Revelation 6:1-8). Perhaps a grammatical/syntactical observation will help. Nowhere in the Old Testament is anyone said to “sit” on a horse. People “ride” horses, or don’t ride,…
Mary Beard describes Ben Power’s production of Medea “impressive.” But she wonders if the modernized version of the tragedy is Euripides. “Euripides’ play is a complex work, raising difficult issues about gender, sincerity, self-interest and responsibility. But, although Medea ends up killing her sons (with all the terrible conflicts that…
Ernest Simmons’s The Entangled Trinity is an effort to work out the relation of theology and science through Trinitarian theology, and particularly through the concept of perichoresis, which leads into a panentheistic understanding of God’s relation to the world. He uses the metaphor of “complementarity” the quantum idea that what…
In recent years, historians have argued that the state didn’t exist in the medieval period. States are born of war, argues Charles Tilly, especially the wars of the early modern era. Annales scholars and their descendants saw tiny medieval duchies and counties as antitheses to centralized state power. Sverre Bagge…
Marcia Shoop is extraordinarily well-positioned to reflect on the theological dimensions of contemporary sports. A college athlete with a PhD from Emory University, Shoop is married to John Shoop, a former college quarterback who has coached both in the NFL and the NCAA. Shoop’s Touchdowns for Jesus bills itself as…
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