Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The resurrection stories in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are among the strangest stories in all of the literature of the world, even among the strangest stories in the Bible. That is true of each Gospel’s accounts individually, but even more of the collection as a whole. On the one…
As a pastor, I’m interested in discipleship. Christians are called to be disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. Discipleship has everything to do with the disciplines we walk by in our lives. Things like Bible reading, prayer, and fasting are hallmarks of standard Christian discipleship. The basic thrust is that…
Psalm 1 is justly famous among biblical texts. It opens the Psalter, it’s a paean to the life-giving power of the Law, and it beautifully describes righteous life as a stable, fruitful tree. It subtly weaves the contrasting threads of wickedness and righteousness into a succinct summary of biblical wisdom:…
No book is more quoted in Hebrews than the Psalter: there are quotations and allusions to psalms on virtually every page. And many of the quotations are not passing references but closely considered and repeatedly cited as the author of Hebrews develops his central arguments. Much of Hebrews is exposition…
Howard Bloom is a beautiful hypocrite. The author of books in as different subjects as Mohammed, scientific theory, and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, he professes to be a “stone cold atheist.” Yet in spite of that profession, Bloom obviously writes as a Jew; that is, he writes with…
There may be some debate about who deserves the title “the King of American literature,” but, at least to my mind, there should be no debate over who deserves to be “the Queen” – let’s give the crown to Flannery O’Connor. She is, however, a very unlikely queen. Unlikely, not…
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In his study of The Concept of Purity at Qumran and in the Letters of Paul , Michael Newton argues that Paul transfers the logic and patterns of purity and cult from the temple to the new temple-community, the church. Relying mainly on Corinthians, Newton writes: “By describing the Christian…
A hermeneutical rule of thumb I share with students: Chapter 2 comes after chapter 1. It has many applications, as in “Chapter 18 comes after chapter 17.” Make the observation, then ask, Why? Why is that story there , after this one and before that one? The story of Sodom…
After describing the heroes of faith from creation to Jericho with some leisure, Hebrews 11 closes with a rapid-fire survey of everything from the judges on (vv. 32-38). It's a nicely constructed passage. First, six individuals are named, followed by a general reference to “prophets”: Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David,…
In a 1991 article in the Tyndale Bulletin , Edwin Judge reviews the symbolic resonances of the phrase “mark of the beast,” but notes, rightly that “the visions of Revelation keep disconcertingly coming down to earth” (158). So he looks for historical evidence of a mark imposed by Roman authorities…
In an essay on atonement in the Jewish Studies Quarterly from the early 1990s, Mary Douglas explains “the social origins of ideas about defilement in general”: Living in a community, people find themselves wanting to keep apart from some dissimilar others and to be included within sets of similars. To…
“The ambition of the liberal political philosopher,” writes Paul Kahn ( Putting Liberalism in its Place , 120), is to find that set of arguments that is so compelling that every individual, not corrupted by the illogic of interest, would necessarily affirm those reasons as his own.” Because it assumes…
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