Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
WHAT IS THE OT PRECURSOR OF THE NT OFFICE OF PASTOR? HOW DOES THE FORMER ILLUMINATE THE LATTER? The first problem to address is: how do we know that there is an office of pastor in the New Testament? 1 Perhaps the way the question is put may permit me…
[This essay was originally published in December, 1981, in The Biblical Educator , a publication of the Institute for Christian Economics, and again with slight revisions in Contra Mundum 7 (Spring, 1993). It is reprinted here as a supplement to my book Creation in Six Days .] In 1979, Dr.…
Anyone seeking to reverse the meaning of this promise needs to come to grips not only with the phrase "God was with the lad" later on, but also with Hagar’s response in 16:13. She worships Yahweh, putting her trust in Him and obeying Him. In fact, Hagar is at the…
Ishmael is the narrator of Melville’s fantasy-romance Moby Dick. Melville takes up the traditional view of Ishmael as a wayward son of Abraham, driven out solely because of the Divine "caprice" of election, an angry man with his hand raised against all other men. He is a fitting "anti-hero," or…
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom,…
Meditations by James B. Jordan Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom. God and two angels…
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I suggested in a post this past week that Jesus is the new Phinehas when he comes to judge the Balaamites of Pergamum (Revelation 2:14-16). I had in mind Numbers 25, where Phinehas arrests a plague that breaks out because Israelites are fornicating and committing idolatry with Moabite women who…
John Bergsma observes that the year of Jubilee was proclaimed with a trumpet blast on the day of atonement ( The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran , 92), and draws this conclusion: Since other ancient Near Eastern festivals of the seventh month—such as the akîtu —combined reassertion of the rule…
Why do so many bad guys and sinister places have names using the syllable “mor”? James Harbeck mentions Moriarty, Voldemort, Mordor, and Piers Morgan, though he ultimately dismisses the last. The answer that immediately occurs is etymological: mor - is linked to death in Romance languages, the Germanic mora means…
In the prim and sanitized West, we think of purity rules as superstitious and primitive. We have transcended such nonsense. Mary Douglas and other anthropologists have tried to convince us that we’re self-deluded, but leave that to the side. As Rose George reports , there are places in the world…
Novelist Amin Malouf was born in Lebanon, and now lives in Paris. He’s a Melchite Christian. As he points out at the beginning of In the Name of Identity , those few markers only begin to spell out his complex of allegiances and loyalties. Malouf is not claiming to be…
Responding to a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that Indian men spend only 19 minutes a day on housework, Chandrahas Choudhury rises up in witty defense of the Indian male . “Millions of Indian men do huge amounts of housework — but in single-man or all-male…
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