Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8) O God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, who inspired Creation with the breath of your nostrils, who placed Adam in the…
For nearly a half-century, Sodom has been a key symbol in the American culture wars. On the one side, we have an aggressive movement among homosexuals that has first decriminalized homosexual conduct, then to force cultural and legal recognition of homosexuals as a minority and to normalize homosexual behaviors, finally…
Speaking of the Church, Romans 11:16-17 says, "And if the root be holy, the branches are also. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root of the fatness of the…
At the end of Isaiah 61, Yahweh's Servant rejoices because the Lord clothes Him with salvation and righteousness. He decks Him like a bridegroom with a garland on His head. He wears jewels like a bride. He is a new bridegroom in a new garden of Eden, a garden of…
Before anything else, a word about “Torah” may be in order. I have been persuaded that “law” is a bad translation of “Torah,” even though it is evident that what is called “Torah” does have commandments, statutes, and ordinances in abundance. Why not “law?” “Law” as a translation for “Torah”…
Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she…
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“A tradition of seven heavens and seven earths was popular in the Near East during the later part of the first millennium B.C.E. and the first millennium C.E.,” writes Wayne Horowitz ( Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography , 217). He elaborates: “Surviving Hebrew and Arabic texts from this time present cosmographies in…
Yahweh destroys the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot escapes with his daughters to a cave, where they get their father drunk with wine, and seduce him, giving birth to Moab and Ammon. Late in Judges, Gibeah of Benjamin has become a Sodom, and Yahweh sends the rest of Israel…
When there’s a famine in the land, people leave for brighter horizons. They find food; they multiply; they get rich. It happens to Abram in Egypt, to Jacob in Haran, to Israel in Egypt. Exile agrees with Israel; they always return with children and treasures. Except Naomi. She goes to…
The gods fight back chaos and form a universe, and set up an image to mark the boundary of their ordered realm. A god instructs a king to build a temple, who places an image of the God in the inner sanctuary. The zones of ancient cosmology - heaven, sky,…
John hears a voice behind him and turns to see the voice. First he sees lampstands (Revelation 1:10, 12). Austin Farrer ( The Revelation of St. John Divine , 65) points out that the turning and the lampstands come from Zechariah 4:1-2. He explains, “Zechariah’s vision was familiar to Israelites…
Jesus has eyes of fire (Revelation 1:14). Eyes are organs of judgment, and to get near Jesus you have to pass through the fire. In the next phrase, Jesus is said to have feet like bronze, glowing as if “fired in a furnace” (v. 15). He has walked through the…
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