Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
While controversies over the writings of Paul continue in various corners of the intellectual globe, the word of God given through Paul and his scribe and all of the church’s interpreters and translators over the last two millennia is still readily available to the lofty and the lowly. Paul, as…
The second in a series of studies in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 22:30: A man shall not take his father’s wife, and shall not uncover his father’s wing (Hebrew: kanaf ). There are a number of unusual features in this law that mark it out from the previous context, indicating that it…
The texts of Christianity have been slowly at work, under the power of the Holy Spirit for 2000 years now. If we could be magically transported back into the world of two millennia ago, modern Americans would be shocked at the cruelty of that world. There was no concern for…
The Story of the Gadarene Madman is told in all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-37). Jesus ventures into a Gentile area when He passes over the Sea of Galilee. Upon disembarking from his boat, he is immediately met by a demon-possessed madman. Upon meeting Jesus, he…
Part 1 of a multi-part series of studies on Deuteronomy 22:30-23:8. Eric Auerbach, in his classic work on Western literature, devotes his first chapter to contrasting Homer with the Bible. Of Homer, he writes of the “need of Homeric style to leave nothing which it mentions half in darkness and…
Trinity House Fellow James B. Jordan will be a speaker at an International Conference on Biblical Symbolism that will be held in Seoul on Monday, May 27 in 2013. He will address "The Importance of Biblical Symbolism and Symbolic Interpretation of the Bible." The conference will have three other speakers…
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I suggested in a post this past week that Jesus is the new Phinehas when he comes to judge the Balaamites of Pergamum (Revelation 2:14-16). I had in mind Numbers 25, where Phinehas arrests a plague that breaks out because Israelites are fornicating and committing idolatry with Moabite women who…
John Bergsma observes that the year of Jubilee was proclaimed with a trumpet blast on the day of atonement ( The Jubilee from Leviticus to Qumran , 92), and draws this conclusion: Since other ancient Near Eastern festivals of the seventh month—such as the akîtu —combined reassertion of the rule…
Why do so many bad guys and sinister places have names using the syllable “mor”? James Harbeck mentions Moriarty, Voldemort, Mordor, and Piers Morgan, though he ultimately dismisses the last. The answer that immediately occurs is etymological: mor - is linked to death in Romance languages, the Germanic mora means…
In the prim and sanitized West, we think of purity rules as superstitious and primitive. We have transcended such nonsense. Mary Douglas and other anthropologists have tried to convince us that we’re self-deluded, but leave that to the side. As Rose George reports , there are places in the world…
Novelist Amin Malouf was born in Lebanon, and now lives in Paris. He’s a Melchite Christian. As he points out at the beginning of In the Name of Identity , those few markers only begin to spell out his complex of allegiances and loyalties. Malouf is not claiming to be…
Responding to a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that Indian men spend only 19 minutes a day on housework, Chandrahas Choudhury rises up in witty defense of the Indian male . “Millions of Indian men do huge amounts of housework — but in single-man or all-male…
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