Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In the 48th year, the third month, and the fourteenth night, while I slept in my bed, I was taken in vision to Xanadu and set upon a high hill. Looking to the west, I saw a large building, surrounded with gardens and fountains, walks and gravestones, and a bell…
‘Tis the season to be informed–sometimes in gentleness, often with vigor–by a variety of Christians (and others) 1 claiming that it is wrong to celebrate Christmas. I have no desire to force anyone to celebrate Christmas against their will. Indeed, it would be insulting to the high holiday to pretend…
Part 2: The Enoch Factor Back in Open Book 21 we discussed "The Enoch Factor." Because that was several years ago (May 1994) and many people have begun reading this letter since that time, we shall return to the subject here and expand what we wrote at that time. After…
Day 6. The sixth day provides the creation of land animals and of humanity. As we saw above, the second day spills over to the first half of the third day, for only at that point did God say that it was good. Similarly, it seems that the fifth day…
During the past two decades, the "quest of the historical Jesus" has entered a new phase. The first incarnation of the quest was rudely shaken by the publication of Albert Schweitzer’s classic Quest of the Historical Jesus , easily the most devastating and funniest work of New Testament scholarship ever…
At the 1997 Biblical Horizons Summer Conference, the Rev. Jeffrey Meyers presented a series of remarkable lectures on the gospel of Mark. Among his many insightful comments, he suggested that the second gospel continues where the first gospel ends; Matthew ends with Jesus saying "Go" (Matthew 28:19), and Mark’s shows…
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Danielle Allen has a fascinating review of Josiah Ober’s Democracy and Knowledge in the TNR (3/18). Allen notes that eighteenth century thinkers, including the American founders, considered Athenian democracy a failure, and concluded that “pure democracy devolved into either anarchy or rule by a corrupt managerial elite.” Ober’s volume, the…
Camille Paglia can be depended upon for thinking for herself. In an essay at Salon.com, she calls for Obama to be freed from the “flacks, fixers and goons — his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the…
In her book on Constantine’s marriage legislation, Judith Evans Grubbs suggests that Constantine was not trying to “Christianize” law but to give “to the Christian ecclesiastical establishment powers and privileges with which it was able to take over new functions and amass more wealth and influence . . . .…
David Cooper reviews Yuriko Saito’s recent Everyday Aesthetics in the February 20 issue of the TLS . He suggests that “Saito exposes to main dimensions of the embedded character of everyday aesthetic reactions”: “First, they are highly context-dependent, in a way that responses to ark works - which are normally…
I’ve read several devastating reviews of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest in the past few weeks, but Carol Tavris ( TLS , 2/20) takes the prize. She identifies the main problem with Gladwell’s work as the “except when it doesn’t” problem. She writes, “the premiss of Outliers: The story of success is…
David Wootton ( TLS , 2/27) offers a fascinating account of what happened to Keith Thomas who, in his latest book, effaces himself and his contemporaries in a way that places him “at odds with the main trends in historical scholarship over the past forty years.” Wootton analyzes this as…
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