Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If 1 Chronicles were a movie, it would begin with two hours and forty-five minutes of credits: Name after name scrolling across the screen, most of them (as far as we’re concerned) obscurities and nonentities and unknowns, forgotten fathers and sons and mighty men; all the bit players in the…
Let me locate myself. I’m sitting on a sand dune, three hundred feet above the blue-as-a-swimmer-crab water of Lake Michigan. I’m so high above the surface that the sound of the waves flopping onto the beach is as quiet as wind easing through a screen door. Around me are several…
My title is too grand. What I offer here falls far short of a full description of poetry. I barely offer a definition. A more accurate title would be “Axioms and Suspicions About Poetry.” Axioms first. I have three of them. The first is the closest I can come to…
In his book In Defense of Food Michael Pollan does just what the title suggests, he defends food. Pollan argues that the presupposition behind modern food science, or “nutritionism” as he calls it, is that humans don’t need food, they need nutrients. To be sure, modern science is not yet…
The early church took possession of the Roman Empire within a few centuries, largely because she ministered sacrificially in word and deed. The church provided services and care that the empire and pagan religions could not in times of crisis. The faithful witness of those serving Christians bore great fruit…
My title, “The Original Murder” will be understood by many readers, if not almost all, to refer to Cain’s murder of Abel, but I have in mind the very first murder, the one which Jesus pointed to when He said that Satan was a murderer “from the beginning.” “You are…
Showing page 128 of 309
Showing page 1 of 43
It’s hard to find interesting work on Leviticus 23. It’s easy to find tedious critical dissections of the history of the text. One of the conundrums is in verse 2: First we read about the appointed times of Yahweh. Then at the end of the verse we hear about “my”…
Yahweh’s pesach is to take place on the fourteenth day of the first ( ri’shown ) month (Leviticus 23:5). The timing echoes back to the dawn of time. The waters of the flood dried up on the first of the first month ( ri’shown ). Passover celebrates Israel’s deliverance from…
Israel’s feasts both followed the agricultural calendar and reenacted Israel’s past. Passover, Pentecost and Booths celebrated various phases of planting, growth, and harvest. Israel’s feasts reconciled nature with salvation history. The reconciliation was ritual, calendrical. The dual calendar protected Israel from becoming a nature cult, and from becoming a purely…
“Knowledge is a gift ,” writes Esther Lightcap Meek ( A Little Manual for Knowing , 8). She continues, “Epiphany comes as a surprising encounter equal parts knowing and being known. It could never have been achieved in a systematic or linear fashion. It transforms knower and known. Deep insight…
I offer some reflections on the theology of festivity in the Hebrew Bible, focused on Leviticus 23.
Thomas Mallon offers some qualified praise to Grace Metalious’s Peyton Place in the NYTBR . He thinks it is several cuts above today’s romance novels. He writes, “Metalious’s writing is mostly undemanding, but it’s also, often . . . not bad. Compared with Jacqueline Susann, her 1960s successor, she reads…
Showing page 662 of 2212
Your weekly digest for all things Theopolis.
