Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When Jesus says in the farewell discourse that his disciples know the way to where He is going, Thomas replies: “We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus answers Thomas, but He gives Thomas more than he asked : “I am the way,…
Through the pandemic we learned a lot about infections, how to catch them, what’s contagious, how to protect yourself from getting the infection. I learned a lot of new terms, like “social distancing,” “ppe” (personal protective equipment), N95 masks, and so on. We’ve seen that people are willing to go…
In Genesis 9:20, Noah is called “a man of the soil”. This phrase is a bit of a shock in the Hebrew; though it’s made up of two very common words - 'ish is “man” and 'adamah is “soil” or “ground” - these two words are never used together before…
Harold Bloom’s discussion of Twelfth Night in his Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is, as would be expected, insightful. It displays his deep love of poetry, and includes some truly eloquent descriptions of Orsino: “that sublimely outrageous lover of love” and “amiable erotic lunacy.” Bloom is worth reading just…
There have been times when Evangelicals, in an attempt to be clear about the errors of Rome and Constantinople concerning Mary, have been so denigrating of the mother of our Lord that they sounded more like cut and pasted lines from the Babylonian Talmud than they did disciples of Mary’s…
Awe is the phenomena experienced when one looks up and lights upon the height, majesty, and mystery of the California Redwoods. It appears the trees pierce heaven itself. Among these giant organisms are the Sequoia–while they are shorter in form, they reserve a width that spans an automobile. These trees…
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PROVERBS 25:27 Like Genesis 1-2, this section of Proverbs 25 establishes a rhythm of “good” and then declares something “not good.” “Good” it is to live in the corner of the roof, and “good” news refreshes the soul; but it is “not good” to eat too much honey. Chapters 24-25…
Geza Alfoldy concludes his Social History of Rome with suggestive comments about the relation of Christianity and the fall of the empire. The problem was not that Christianity undermined patriotism; it didn’t. Rather, “The role of Christianity in the collapse of the Roman system of power resulted from the fact…
Isaiah tells a tale of a vineyard (5:1-7), and then issues a series of woes (5:8-23) that culminates in a warning that a nation is going to be summoned to Judah (5:24-30). Jesus follows the same sequence: Parables of the vineyard in chapters 20-21 are followed by woes (ch. 23)…
PROVERBS 25:23 This verse gives us a translation issue in the first line. The NASB translates the line “The north wind brings forth rain,” but the KJV says that the north wind “drives away rain.” The verb in question has a range of applications and uses, but the basic idea…
Barton again: “The Romans’ expectations of the brave gladiator were identical to their expections of the sacrificial victim: the victim in a Roman sacrifice was led to the altar by a slack rope, in order that it might not seem to be dragged by force. Any show of resistance on…
From a 1989 article by CA Barton on gladiatorial games in Rome: When a gladiator entered the arena, “he took a frightful oath, the sacramentum gladiatorim ; he swore to endure being burned, bound, beaten, and slain by the sword . . . . He foreswore all that might ameliorate…
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