Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When Samuel saw Saul, Yahweh answered him, "Behold, the man of whom I spoke to you! This one will restrain My people" (1 Samuel 9:17) Many English versions of 1 Samuel 9:17 read, "This one will rule over My people," but that is a mistranslation. The Hebrew verb is `atsar…
We have arrived at the tentative date of A.M. 3474 for the decree of Cyrus, and we have determined to operate as if the 70 weeks of Daniel 9 are literal years. We also decided that Messiah the Prince arrives at the beginning of the 70th week, after the 69…
The book of Proverbs appears as a largely random collection of aphorisms drawn from experience saturated in law. Despite its random arrangement, however, the book does have an over-arching structure that reinforces its main themes. One way to gather clues regarding the structure of a biblical book (or any book)…
I recently had the privilege and pleasure of reading the first draught of Gary North’s Economic Commentary on Leviticus , which will be out some time next year. Gary’s comments on Leviticus 27 were stimulating, and caused me to take another look at the passage. The results, which I sent…
As we have seen in this series, each time there is a new covenant, there is a break in the year-by-year chronology. At the same time, each time the break is crossed by information provided in the text. Thus, the year-by-year chronology breaks down at the birth of Abraham, but…
The Openness of Literature Let’s discuss literature for a moment. There are two ways a story or novel can close. The first is called poetic justice. When a story ends with poetic justice, the bad guys are all punished and the good guys are all rewarded. This kind of story…
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Archaeologists once discovered a small fragment of Greek text in the Egyptian desert. The name “Paul” appeared at the beginning of the text, and one of the words contained what looked like the first letters of the word “apostle.” Otherwise, the text did not conform to any known texts from…
Gadamer points out that the Enlightenment operated on “an unshakable premise: the scheme of the conquest of mythos by logos.” For the Enlightenment, this represented a progress. Romanticism assumed the same development, but considered it a tragic lost. Romantics found “that olden times - the world of myth, unreflective life,…
Eugene Peterson writes that the Sabbath “erects a weekly bastion against the commodification of time, against reducing time to money, reducing time to what we can get out of it, against leaving no time for God or beauty or anything that cannot be used or purchased. It is a defense…
In an essay on M. H. Abrams’s Natural Supernaturalism , Wayne Booth praises the style of the book, but more: “I must emphasize that I am not simply praising Abrams’ style. i am making what I take to be a much more risky claim: that a style that is good…
Gracia argues: “Consider a text of a message sent by a particular historical figure to another, and which is being examined by a historian. The historian wishes to determine exactly what the person who sent the message meant, and what the person who received the message understood by it, so…
Gracia nicely illustrates how meaning can go beyond authorial intention with a reference to games: “one of the plays makes a move the significance of which he does not quite grasp. For the player is the author of the move, and wins or loses accordingly, by virtue of the fact…
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