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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Biblical Horizons

OPEN BOOK: Views and Reviews

Isaac E. Mozeson, The Word: The Dictionary that Reveals the Hebrew Sources of English (Northvale, NJ: Jacob Aaronson Inc., 1995), 310 pp. Reviewed by James B. Jordan. Once there was only one language in the world, the language God spoke to Adam. At the Tower of Babel, there came to…

by James B. JordanJune 28, 1996
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Esther

Esther: Historical & Chronological Comments (IV)

2. The Setting of the Book of Esther A. Xerxes (continued from previous issue) Ezra 6:14 says that the Jews finished building "according to the command of the God of Israel and the decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes king of Persia." The problem with this verse is that…

by James B. JordanJune 28, 1996
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Acts

Jesus and Amalek

This essay goes with our previous study of the Amalek pattern back in Biblical Horizons No. 2. Since many do not have this essay, entitled "The Battle of Gog and Magog," let me cite the relevant paragraphs: Note in Genesis 12-15 that Abram moves into the land after escaping Pharaoh…

by James B. JordanJune 28, 1996
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Proverbs

The Strange Woman

Proverbs 7:6-23 is one of several passages early in the Proverbs in which Solomon warns his son about the wiles and dangers of the "strange woman." It is certainly quite proper to take these as straightforward warnings against sexual sins, and these are certainly warnings that need to be impressed…

by Peter LeithartJune 27, 1996
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Biblical Studies

Some Observations

1. In Luke 4:20 we read that after Jesus finished reading from Isaiah, "the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon Him." This is usually taken in a psychological sense: They were amazed at Jesus somehow. I suggest that, as always, a merely psychological reading is a modern…

by James B. JordanMay 28, 1996
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Esther

Esther: Historical & Chronological Comments (III)

2. The Setting of the Book of Esther Up to now we have assumed what we must prove, that the king in Esther is Darius the Great. While Biblical chronologists have usually taken this position, commentators on the book of Esther have often taken others as the king. One view,…

by James B. JordanMay 28, 1996

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Literature

Upside-down Popes

John Scott offers this rich interpretation of Inferno 19, where Dante comes across a collection of popes and other churchmen stuck upside-down in the rocks of Hell, their feet “licked” with fire: “Instead of turning their desires heavenward, these corrupt churchmen had sold the things of the Holy Spirit (just…

April 1, 2005
Literature

Why Virgil?

Why is it Virgil who leads Dante through Hell and as far as the top of Mount Purgatory? Well, he’s a poet for one thing, the greatest poet of all by Dante’s reckoning. Plus, for the medievals, he had taken on the role of sage and magus, and was widely…

March 31, 2005

Naboth’s Refusal

Why did Naboth refuse to sell his vineyard to Ahab? Ray Dillard pointed to Leviticus 25 for the answer: “Because the land represented the fruit of the nation’s redemption, God commanded that it remain in the hands of the families to whom it was originally allotted. The land had been…

March 30, 2005

Naboth’s Refusal

Why did Naboth refuse to sell his vineyard to Ahab? Ray Dillard pointed to Leviticus 25 for the answer: “Because the land represented the fruit of the nation’s redemption, God commanded that it remain in the hands of the families to whom it was originally allotted. The land had been…

March 30, 2005

Sermon Notes, April 3

INTRODUCTION Ahab?s sin begins in idolatry. But his sin is not a ?private?Esin, nor is it confined to a ?religious?Earea of life. In 1 Kings, as in all the prophets, idolatry always leads to social oppression and injustice. The sin of Ahab foreshadows the later oppressions of Manasseh and other…

March 29, 2005

The Body

Paul’s description of the church as the body of Christ parallels in both its basic conception and in its details the social theory of ancient moralists. Seneca, for instance, wrote, “What if the hands should desire to harm the feet, or the eyes the hands? As all the members of…

March 29, 2005

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