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Women in Israel

Last updated on: August 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In the course of her lively challenge to goddess-obsessions among scholars (In the Wake of the Goddess), Tikva Frymer-Kensky claims that ancient Israel embodied a proto-feminist sexual polity: “There i nothing disinctively ‘female’ about the way women are portrayed in the Bible, nothing particularly feminine about either their goals or their strategies. The goals of women are the same goals held by the biblical male characters and the authors of the stories. . . . Women pursue their goals as... Read more

Dismantling in sevens

Last updated on: August 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

David Chilton points out (Days of Vengeance, 196-7) points out that seven features of the creation are rendered useless when the sixth seal is opened (Revelation 6:12-14): 1. Earth quakes. 2. The sun turns black. 3. The moon turns to blood. 4. Stars fall from heaven. 5. Heaven splits as it rolls up. 6. Mountains move. 7. Islands move. Verse 15 follows with a sevenfold classification of human beings: kings, great men, commanders, rich, strong, slave, free – all of... Read more

Love for a Third

Last updated on: August 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

According to Richard of St. Victory (On the Trinity), God is the fullness and perfection of all goodness. Plotinus said as much. But then Richard adds that nothing is better than charity, something that Plotinus does not say. For Richard, charity cannot be a solitary enterprise; charity must be directed at another: “no one is properly said to have charity on the basis of his own private love of himself.” Thus, “it is necessary for love to be directed toward another for... Read more

Falling stars

Last updated on: August 14, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

It’s one of those things everyone knows: The Bible talks a lot about falling stars. It turns out it’s one of those things that everyone knows but is wrong. There’s a single fallen star in Isaiah 14:12. Stars lose their brightness in various places (Ezekiel 32:7; Joel 2:109; 3:15). But in the Old Testament, there’s only one passage with falling stars: Daniel 8:10, when stars are displaced from the sky by a growing horn and then trampled underfoot. Stars do... Read more

Numismatic Noah

Last updated on: August 14, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Alexander Heidel (Babylonian Genesis, 235) notes that the word for “ark” in Greek accounts of the flood is not the normal word for boat but kibotos, a chest or coffer. This term was used to distinguish the Phrygian (Syrian) city of Apamea from other cities of the same name, and that designation was captured in coins issued during the reign of Septimus Severus, whose face is on one side of the coin. Heidel writes that the obverse “picture[s] an open... Read more

Living Toward Death

Last updated on: August 14, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

One of the crucial differences is the role of death. According to Heidel (Babylonian Genesis, 137-8), “The destructive power of death, according to Babylonian and Assyrian speculations, extended not only over mankind and over plant and animal life but even over the gods. While the proverbially immortal gods could not die a natural death, they could perish through violence. Apsu and Mummu were killed by Ea; Ti’amat lost her life in combat with Marduk; Kingu and the Lamga deities were... Read more

Extreme

Last updated on: August 14, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Extreme by Emma Barrett and Paul Martin “examines extraordinary human endeavour and the psychological qualities that underpin it.” The authors are interested in assessing the psychological benefits and damage brought on by encounters with extreme environments – mountains, the deep ocean – and extreme activities like cave diving. They want to “understand what happens, both mentally and physically, to people at the limits of human experience,” and how their extreme encounters plays out in their un-extreme lives and relationships. Stress... Read more

Evangelical Sex

Last updated on: August 14, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Amy DeRogatis begins her study of Evangelical ideals of sex, Saving Sex, by recounting Texas Pastor Ed Young’s 2012 “bed-in,” which he held on the roof of Fellowship Church. With his wife, he spent 24 hours live-streaming interviews urging Evangelicals to have sex more often. Young considers himself a cutting-edge radical, but as DeRogatis says, “Anyone who has observed American evangelical culture over the past few decades knows that, despite Young’s claims, evangelicals cannot stop talking about sex. . . .... Read more

Nyssa on Divine Personhood

Last updated on: August 14, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Thomas McCall acknowledegs in his Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? that patristic and medieval writers weren’t “fond of such expressions as ‘center of consciousness and will,’” but argues that “it is not at all difficult to find language that coheres well” with such a formulation (238). He summarizes an argument from Michel Rene Barnes in support: Barnes “recognizes that ‘a knowledge of Gregory’s psychology’ makes clear ‘that personal relationship and consciousness are not important, substantial psychological concepts for Gregory,’ and he holds... Read more

Figuring History

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Timothy Furry’s Allegorizing History is a careful, engaging study of the Venerable Bede’s understanding of history, and of biblical hermeneutics. But perhaps the book’s greatest interest comes at the end, in a more theoretical conclusion, where Furry draws on the work of Frank Ankersmit to argue that history-writing is invariably figural. Ankersmit distinguishes between historical description and historical representation. The latter is not merely an accumulation of facts but a proposal, a representation of the past “in much the same way,”... Read more

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