From Former Prophets to Deuteronomistic History

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:42 pm By Peter Leithart

Here’s a PhD thesis: What is going on, philosophically and theologically, in the transition from viewing Joshua-2 Kings as Former Prophets (Jewish tradition) to seeing them as Historical Books (evangelical) to seeing them as Deuteronomistic History (contemporary academic consensus). There’s a story to unpack there similar to the story that Milbank tells (all too briefly) about how Wellhausen inscribed the liberal Protestant metanarrative into the history of ancient Israel, thus turning the OT (circularly) into a warrant for liberal Protestantism.... Read more

Parabolic history

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:05 am By Peter Leithart

Jesus comes telling parables, so that seeing they might not see and hearing they might not understand. Yahweh does the same in Kings; He tells and enacts parables that are understood only by those who have received the wisdom that comes from God. It is, as with Jesus and Paul, a wisdom that runs counter to the wisdom of the world, and yet in undermining, fulfills it. One suspects that the original, presumably exilic readers of Kings puzzled over its... Read more

Wedding Sermon

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:48 pm By Peter Leithart

So far as Scripture is concerned, the marriage of Adam and Eve was the first, and the last, nude wedding. As soon as Adam sinned, he and Eve made aprons, and later the Lord replaced those with animal skins. Clothing is mercy, hiding the shame of sin. But clothing is also a judgment that institutionalizes the alienation of husband and wife that began immediately after the fall. Clothing protects us from shame, but clothing is also a barrier to intimacy.... Read more

Lot Complex

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

Once he points it out, you see it everywhere. In Lot’s Daughters , Robert Polhemus analyzes the Lot Complex, a mirror-image of the Oedipal Complex and nearly as universal in Western cultural imagination. He traces the interpretation of the story of Lot and his daughters from Genesis to the Reformation, and then uncovers the same structure in Shakespeare, Austen, the Brontes, Mary Shelley, Dickens, Joyce, Nabokov (duh!), and brings us up to date with a chapter on Mia Farrow and... Read more

Triune trust

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:50 pm By Peter Leithart

Trust in any circumstances is a paradox. On the one hand, trust requires intimacy. We grow in trust by sharing things with a trusted friend that we would not with others. Trust demands that protective veil be drawn between those allowed “inside” and those kept “outside.” Yet trust requires also recognition of the other’s independence. A father who cannot let a teenaged daughter out of her sight does not trust; but if a father never speaks to his daughter, there... Read more

Translation, 2 Kings 14

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm By Peter Leithart

In the second year to Yo’ash son of Yo’achaz king of Yisrael Reigned-as-king ‘Amatzyahu son of Yo’ash king of Yehudah. A son of twenty-five years he was in his reigning-as-king And twenty-nine years he reigned-as-king in Yrushalaim. Now the name of his mother Yeho’adayn from Yerushalaim. And he did the upright-thing in the eyes of Yahweh, only not as David his father according to what Yo’ash his father did he did. Only the high places he did not turn aside.... Read more

Amaziah of Judah, Jehoash of Israel

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm By Peter Leithart

There are some confusing twists in 2 Kings 14:1-16. The chapter begins by announcing the beginning of the reign of Amaziah son of Joash of Judah. He is described as an upright king, walking in the ways of his father Joash, though he is not a king of Davidic caliber. He proves to be much like his father, doing right and following Torah, but ending his reign (at least, the account of his reign) with a disastrous challenge to Israel,... Read more

Ecclesial “denotation”

Last updated on: July 4, 2005 at 4:27 pm By Peter Leithart

In his books, Ephraim Radner offers numerous profound insights into the complications and implications of a divided Christianity. Near the beginning of Hope Among the Fragments , he points to some of the dangers of post-Reformation efforts to “denote” the church -that is, to describe the church as “something that can be pointed to, examined, analyzed, and wherever possible manipulated according to whatever current theories of cultural resistance or viability are at hand, all supposedly for the sake of God.”... Read more

Ecclesial “denotation”

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

Translation, 2 Kings 13

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm By Peter Leithart

In the twenty-third year to Yo’ash son of ‘Achazyahu king of Yehudah Reigned-as-king Yeho’achaz son of Yehu’ over Yisrael in Shomron seventeen years. And he did the evil in the eyes of Yahweh And the walked after the sins of Yarav’am son of Nevat who caused-Israel-to-sin. He did not turned aside from them. And the nose of Yahweh burned in Yisrael And he gave them in the hand of Chaza’el king of ‘Aram And in the hand of Son-of-Hadad son... Read more