Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The Building of the Temple Solomon began work on the Temple in the second month of his fourth year. This was the year 2993, a sabbath year. He finished in the eighth month of his eleventh year, the year 3000, also a sabbath. (1 Ki. 6:1, 38). This is said…
The Bible expresses its chronology not only in sequences of years, but also in sequences of sabbath years and jubilees. This enables us to make a cross-check of our chronology, and when we find apparent problems, to refine it. If our chronology is right, we should find some significant correlations…
Adele Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative Sheffield, England: Almond Press, 1983. This volume is the ninth in the "Bible and Literature Series" under the general editorship of David M. Gunn. According to its author, who teaches Hebrew at the University of Maryland, the book is an effort to…
V. Propp’s classic work Morphology of the Folktale (University of Texas, 1968) argues that one of the basic structures of folk literature is "lack, lack liquidated." A king sets out to look for a wife, and the tale ends with a wedding. Often, the hero sets out on some business…
Luke’s gospel begins and ends in the temple. It opens with Gabriel’s annunciation to the priest Zacharias (whose name, appropriately, means "Yahweh remembers") of the coming of a forerunner. Zacharias is performing priestly service at the time. The book ends with the joyful worship of a new priesthood in the…
Last time we arrived at the year A.M. 3960 as the date for the inauguration of the New Creation through the death, resurrection, ascension, and session of Christ, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. We also saw that this is most likely the year of Paul’s conversion. Fourteen years…
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Ancient Near Eastern texts often refer to a god abandoning his house, the temple, sometimes in outrage over the evils of the people, sometimes because the people’s time has come to an end. Whenever the god leaves, the house and the city where it’s housed is left unprotected. Enemies come…
“Beyond the visual paradigm” was the challenge issued by the organizers of the symposium that eventually produced the volume Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses , edited by Shane Butler and Alex Purves. In place of a visual paradigm, they wanted to offer a “synaesthetic reading of the ancient world” (2).…
Political histories of the Religious Right miss the underlying ferment that gave rise to the movement, argues Molly Worthen in her recent Apostles of Reason . The eruption was more fundamentally an eruption of tensions within Evangelicalism itself. Worthen argues that Evangelicals are united by three dominant questions: The reconciliation…
Isaiah uses the verb “be silent” ( chashah ) seven times. Nearly every time, it is Yahweh who is silent. He has restrained Himself until He cannot hold it in (42:14, 2x), keeping silent so long that Judah began to think they could get away with anything (57:11). For Zion’s…
Yahweh’s Servant will rejoice and won’t go silent until: A. Goes forth B. as brightness C. her [Zion’s] righteousness C’. and her salvation ( yeshu’a ) B’. as a torch A’. burns. Zion’s righteousness and rescue will be light flashing into her darkness, like the brightness ( nogah ) of…
John and Gloria Ben-Daniel argue in their The Apocalypse in the Light of the Temple that the temple serves as the “organizing principle” of John’s Apocalypse (4). The background of the book, then, is not Roman persecution of the church but “the destruction of the second Temple in AD 70…
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