Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
Many years ago, while perusing Janice Anderson’s revised doctoral dissertation, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over again , I was impressed by her attention to literary structures of repetition within and across Matthew’s Gospel. 1 Her research, in part, nudged me closer toward my present conviction that Matthew…
Abbreviated Introduction to the Series Scripture is absolutely dripping with animal metaphors. Animal traits, characteristics, and appearances are attributed to God, Man, Angels, Nations, Armies. Since animals are the lowest creature in the three-tiered hierarchy, they are useful to metaphorically focus on a single aspect of God (bold like a…
“Like a lily among the thorns, so is my love among the maidens… My beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures among the lilies.” Song 2:2, 16 In chapter two of the Song of Solomon, the Beloved compares his Love to a lily among thorns. The language of…
Introduction From the very beginning, angels and animals have played mediating roles between God and Man. Just as the World was made three-tiered (Heaven, Earth, Deep), so the creatures were made (Angels, Men, Animals). Before Christ came to build the permanent bridge across the chasm between God and Man, various…
Matthew 13, the third major discourse of the apostle’s gospel, is comprised almost entirely of parables. While it may seem that all the parables serve the same purpose in fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 13:14), the parables found in verses 44–52, at the very least, function outside that purpose. This…
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Roy Gane’s detailed, technical Cult and Character is a sustained response to Jacob Milgrom’s claim that the purification offers of the Torah did not cleanse the worshiper who offered them but the sanctuary. Gane’s overall argument is convincing, and he makes a lot of intriguing exegetical points along the way.…
Ben Meyer ( The Aims of Jesus , 132) summarizes Jesus message as consisting of two themes: The kingdom of God is a free gift; and it has come in Jesus’ own ministry. Jesus preaches a kingdom that is free and now . It is a demanding kingdom. The free…
In a 2006 article in Past & Present , Jonathan Sheehan traces the origins of the modern contrast of sacred and profane to seventeenth-century dispute about idolatry. It’s a story of keen interest, but this particularly caught my eye. He’s talking about the role of the golden calf incident in…
Like another, better-known Jesuit, Robert Daly has a disarming way about him. What do you do with a Catholic who is as critical of private Masses as most Protestants? A Jesuit who says things like: “It is common to describe lack of contact with tradition as one of the characteristic…
Nancy Jay’s analysis of the patriarchal narratives in Throughout Your Generations Forever is vitiated (to use a solid old Calvinian term) by her reliance on the documentary hypothesis. P says this, J and E that. P traces smooth sacrificial descent from fathers to sons; J and E reveal a more…
Anointing the sick, including the dying, is one of the traditional seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. The Reformers denied that the rite qualified as a sacrament. Formally, this was because anointing did not have a direct authorization from Jesus; more theologically, it was not one of the marks that…
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