Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
John 18, 19: Latter Prophets and the Writings John 18 and 19 record the arrest, trial, torture, and death of Jesus as laid out in detail in Isaiah 53. After the Roman soldier pierces Jesus’ side, John quotes Zechariah: “They shall look at him whom they pierced” (Zech 12:10). In…
John 12.12 – John 17: Latter Prophets In the Hebrew Scriptures, Kings is followed by the Latter Prophets. John 12:15 quotes Zechariah 9:9 as having prophesied Jesus’ triumphal entry: “Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.” [1] N.T. Wright…
John 6.16-70: Joshua The book of Joshua documents the nation of Israel entering the Promised Land. Consider the order of events: (1) Israel is still receiving the daily miracle of manna; (2) Israel miraculously crosses the Jordan on dry foot; (3) The day after Passover , Israel eats produce of…
Since my educational and professional training have revolved around story and narrative structure, I approach John’s Gospel from a literary and narrative perspective. In doing so, I have noticed structural story patterns and followed them where they seem to lead: the Gospel of John parallels the ordering of the books…
The Mt. Sinai Hospital was neolithic on the black hill of Hollow, New Hampshire. Winter dampened the trees and the wind bit at the sparse branches, the sidewalks and stairs were perilous with soggy leaves, and the dim yellow light cast a pallor upon the milky stone building. Ambling inside…
The Revelation can only be understood in the light of Old Testament symbols and sequences. The same is true of the epistle of Jude, which serves as a blistering hors d’oeuvre to John’s fiery feast. Possibly written by the apostle Judas Thaddaeus (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13; John 14:22), the epistle…
Showing page 84 of 309
Showing page 1 of 43
Melanchthon wrote, “The views of Erasmus might have caused greater tumults if Luther had not arisen to arrest them . . . all of this tragedy about the Lord’s Supper started from him.” Melanchthon had in mind Erasmus’s Neo-platonic disparagement of matter, which infected Zwingli and filtered into Anabaptist theology.…
Zechariah predicts that Tyre will be dispossessed and her wealth cast into the sea (v. 4), and then the city will be “consumed with fire.” The verb is the common verb for “eating,” and the picture of an “eating fire” sends the mind back to the sacrificial system, where the…
Zechariah 9:1-4 focuses on the conquest of Tyre, the “wise” city, shrewd at least in amassing wealth (v. 3). But the celebratory description contains a subversive pun. The Hebrew for Tyre is tsor (“rock”), and Zechariah says that Tyre has built herself a fortress, a word built on the same…
In the second edition of African Religions and Philosophy (1989), John Mbiti says that Africans generally lack a concept of the future. Their future tenses reach only a short time into the past, and one people leave the present they are absorbed into an atemporal afterlife. Mbiti notes as well…
E.B. Tylor was the first to characterize African religions as “animist,” remarking that “one great element of religion, that moral element which among the higher nations forms its most vital part, is indeed little represented in the religion of the lower races.” Others characterized the”lower religions” as “fetishist” because of…
Tatian’s Oration to the Greeks is an attempt to vindicate the wisdom of Moses against Greek snobbery toward the barbarians. Aime Puech points out that chronology was central to Tatian’s argument: “In order to rehabilitate the Barbarians it was important to prove that they had contributed their share, indeed the…
Showing page 1525 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
