“Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Luke 7.20). Fictional treatments of Jesus commonly show faithful Jews wondering whether he is in fact the Messiah, the One who is to come. The problem, though, is that any conscientious messianic candidate would probably have had to ask for the question to be expanded. Which One? Which Messiah do you mean? I have written about the complex ideas about the Messiah as they developed rapidly during... Read more
Several of my co-bloggers have commented on aspects of dissertation writing and academic publishing. Perhaps for some gifted individuals, books come forth with ease. For most of us, however, they are laborious endeavors, filled with stretches of angst and exhaustion. What follows are a few thoughts on how to minimize publishing stress and how to arrive at the best finished product. 1) Choose the right topic. This sounds like a no-brainer, but it hasn’t always been easy for me. When... Read more
In 1345, on a cold Tuesday night just before Easter, a miracle happened in Amsterdam. A dying man, given the Eucharist, vomited it right back out. His caregivers were amazed to see that it had reemerged from his mouth whole. They threw the host on a fire, perhaps thinking that this was the least sacrilegious method of getting rid of a holy object. But it still remained undamaged. Local clergy then took possession of the host, proclaiming it a miracle.... Read more
There has been much hand-wringing in recent weeks about the persistent support of Donald Trump among “evangelicals.” Why in the world would so many Christians support a rude and crude candidate like Trump, whose pro-life credentials seem obligatory at best, and who specializes in vilifying Hispanics? If we are to believe the polls, the American evangelical mind may remain quite scandalous, to use Mark Noll’s term. I would suggest, however, that we need not despair quite so much. I frankly... Read more
In case you were unaware of your need for a book titled A History of Pregnancy in Christianity, University of Oslo religious history professor Anne Stensvold’s new release, consider this. Every person on the planet exists because of a reproductive act (sex, usually) and a nine-month period of a care by a particular woman, inside her body. That human beings emerge in that way should be of interest to us all, not just to doctors or scientists or baby-shower attendees.... Read more
I say this with some nervousness, but I think I have a minor discovery to report, involving one of the most puzzling passages of the Bible. I’ll wait for experts to look at the idea and tell me if I actually have anything worthwhile. Let me first state the problem, about which I have posted recently. The last six chapters of Zechariah are commonly taken as being a separate text called Deutero-Zechariah. They describe an era of crisis, with Palestine... Read more
Last week, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made national and international news by releasing photographs of a seer stone used by Joseph Smith during the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. For some contemporary Latter-day Saints and for some outside critics of the church, the fact that Joseph Smith used a seer stone is controversial. Ironically, some of Joseph Smith’s earliest followers objected when he stopped using a seer stone. Smith used several seer stones during... Read more
One of the most provocative topics in the American History survey class is the Salem witchcraft trials. Although it was a great tragedy, the episode lends itself to wonderful discussions about historical interpretation. As Emerson Baker’s recent book A Storm of Witchcraft points out, the past four decades have seen a huge expansion of the literature on Salem, making it difficult to point to just one factor as causative. Befitting the Oxford series in which his book was published, “Pivotal Moments in... Read more
My last post was a near-despairing attempt to locate a spiritual and/or political crisis that might have produced the amazing story told in Deutero-Zechariah, chapters 9 through 14 of that text. (See earlier posts for a summary). Groping for an answer, it occurred to me to synthesize what we actually do know about Jewish history in the Ptolemaic era, the third century BC. It really is not much, especially when contrasted with the tumultuous events of the second century. Blessed... Read more
I was posting about some of the weird and wonderful ideas offered by Robert Graves in his 1946 novel King Jesus, one of which concerned the puzzling text we call Deutero-Zechariah, chapters 9-14 of that prophetic work. As I described, the section tells of a devout prophetic figure who is appalled by the sins of his age, which are denounced in a ringing Oracle. Protesting against the evils of the time, he deliberately assumes the role of the Unworthy Shepherd,... Read more
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