Leithart
Pastor Steve Wilkins clarifies the question of apostasy and assurance at the Trinity House site. Read more
Pastor Steve Wilkins clarifies the question of apostasy and assurance at the Trinity House site. Read more
When Noah (noach) brings the ark to its resting place (nuach) on Ararat, he offers an ascension that brings a resting (niychoach) aroma to Yahweh (Genesis 8:21). The aroma “pacifies” Yahweh, but there seems to be another dimension as well. When Yahweh is enthroned in heaven or the temple, He is said to take His seat in His resting place (maqom menuchah; e.g., Deuteronomy 12:9; Psalm 132:8, 14; Isaiah 66:1). Sacrifice that sends up a niychoach aroma is confirming or... Read more
Christians in the US are entering a period of crisis that will lead to martyrdom. Perhaps the martyrdom will be comparatively mild: No pyres or firing squads, but only mockery, slander, ostracism. But it will still be martyrdom, that is, the opportunity – the privilege – to witness faithfully under intense cultural pressure. How do we prepare? Not by military exercises or organizing militias. We prepare by learning to use finger-weapons, not hand-weapons, which is to say, by learning to... Read more
Yael Klangwisan’s Earthing the Cosmic Queen offers a couple of distinct theoretical frameworks for interpreting the Song of Songs. The first is summarized by the acronym “Pardes,” Paradise, which occurs at Song 4:13. Drawing from rabbinic hermeneutics, she proposes to read the text as it stands (Peshat), to trace its echoes and cues (Remez), to read the text in context (Derasha), and to find the secret of the text (Sohd). Earthing the Cosmic Queen discusses the first three layers, and Klangwisan... Read more
The father of Alexandre Dumas was a man of legendary strength, courage, and energy, and his life is now the subject of a biography, The Black Count by Tom Reiss. The engaging TLS review sums up the influence that Dumas pere had on his famous son: “Dumas’s novels are deeply marked by his hero father. Georges (1843) re-enacts episodes of his life. D’Artagnan (who also fights three duels in a day) is a provincial outsider who has to overcome caste prejudice just as... Read more
Edmund Spenser’s style in the Fairie Queene was odd even when he first wrote it, and Spenser scholars have long argued the whys and wherefores. David Scott Wilson-Okamura argues that, unique as it was, Spenser’s style has sources both in contemporary poetry and antiquity. According to the TLS reviewer of Spenser’s International Style, “For Wilson-Okamura, many of the reasons for Spenser’s apparent idiosyncrasies can be found in his immersion in European literature, and particularly in epics such as Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso... Read more
The TLS reviewer of a recent Mondrian exhibit observes that Mondrian spent the final years of his life attempting to “eradicate any trace of the organic world from his art and surroundings.” Not surprisingly, he was unsuccessful: “Mondrian would remain vexed until the very end by what he regarded as nature’s insidious tenacity.” Behind this was a form of nihlism: “‘I think,’ he wrote shortly before his death in New York in 1944, ‘the destructive element is too much neglected in... Read more
James Hamilton’s lively new commentary on Exalting Christ in Ezra and Nehemiah is a volume in the Christ-Centered Exposition series. The series, written for pastors, is founded on the premise that the Bible “contains a unified story of redemptive history of which Jesus is the hero” (ix). Hamilton’s volume handles the text with attention to literary features, recurring typological patterns, and theological/practical implications. He notes, for instance, that Ezra’s account of the second exodus follows the order of the account of... Read more
Intertextuality is a buzz word in contemporary biblical scholarship. In New Testament studies, the impetus has come not only from literary critical approaches but from the “New Perspective on Paul,” whose main advocate, EP Sanders, encouraged the study of Pauline echoes and allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures and contemporary Jewish writing. But there’s more to mine, argues Michael Fox, in the editorial introduction to Reverberations of Exodus in Scripture. In particular, as Michael Fishbane discovered some years ago, there are intertextual... Read more
At the 2014 Biblical Horizons summer conference last week, James Jordan argued that, unlike the tabernacle that is a reconstituted garden, the temple draws its imagery from the land. The architectural symbolism of the temple includes trees, pomegranates, lilies, lions, palm trees, and other flora and fauna that were not included in the tabernacle. As is clear from the combination of imagery in the Song of Songs, the land and temple mirror each other. To this we can add the... Read more
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