Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When might the Gospel according to Matthew have been written? Of course, any answer can only be speculation, but that does not mean we are reduced to groundless opinion. In this series of articles I point the way to an approach different from the general consensus among scholars today which…
In my first essay on “synopticity” I offered a rather rough definition of the phenomenon and important, though not exhaustive examples. In this essay, I want to introduce broader aspects of the phenomenon of “synopticity.” The first example that I have in mind is conventional stories, stories of different historical…
Since the judgment of Babel was followed by the initiation of the circumcision, the impending end of the circumcision in AD70 explains the significance of the first century miracle of foreign tongues. Except for a few Aramaic “teasers” in the book of Daniel, the Word of God was monolingual and…
To the best of my knowledge “synopticity” is not a word used in theology or Biblical studies, but it seems an appropriate word to describe the kind of phenomena associated with the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These three Gospels tell essentially the same story with significant — sometimes…
Humor is a funny thing. It is altogether familiar yet also mysterious. What makes us laugh? Why do we find things funny? There are academic fields of study dedicated to discovering what makes things humorous. These academicians even have a journal entitled International Journal of Humor Research . No joke.…
Out of all the characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales , the Pardoner has been called the “one lost soul.” The pious Parson, who closes out the collection of tales with a sermon on the seven deadly sins and how a sinner can absolve himself of them, connects the…
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In a 1983 article in Past & Present , Lawrence Stone presented evidence that showed a precipitous drop in the homicide rate in England from the 14th to the 20th century. Why? Stone thinks that Elias’s Civilizing Process had something to do with it: “Yves Castan has shown with great…
Critchley ( Philosophy and the Return of Violence: Studies from this Widening Gyre , 64- 8) gives a lucid analysis of Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” (in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings ), organized around Benjamin’s distinctions between law-making and law-preserving violence, between political and the general strike, and between…
In his essay in Philosophy and the Return of Violence: Studies from this Widening Gyre , Simon Critchley describes Zizek’s Barlebyan politics in Shakespearean terms: “Zizek is, I think, a Slovenian Hamlet.” He “dreams of a divine violence, a cataclysmic, purifying violence of the sovereign ethical deed,” but is left…
At the end of his massively documented The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade , Andrew Feinstein notes the blurring of lines between formal and informal arms markets, the black and the white markets that merge into gray: “While the large defence contractors like BAE and Lockheed Martin -…
Back in 1944, Walter Oakes predicted Marxianly that late capitalism would naturally develop a “permanent war economy.” Defining a war economy as one where “the government’s expenditures for war . . . become a legitimate and significant end-purpose of economic activity.” Capitalism, Oakes claimed, seeks equilibrium that reduces unemployment and…
Some political theorists have thought that we can live like bees - sociable without command, law, speech, punishments. Hobbes demurs ( Hobbes: Leviathan , II.17). And not because we are superior to bees. We can’t live like bees because we are “continually in competition for honour and Dignity” and thus…
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