Isaiah 63 begins with a question: Who is this? He comes from the direction of Edom, his clothing is stained (the Heb. verb is chametz, “leavened”. Yahweh answer: “I speaker of righteousness, mighty to save” (v. 1; Heb. for last phrase rab lehoshiy’a). Verse 2 asks another question: Why the stained clothes? Yahweh answers in parallel verses: A. I was alone B. I trod and trampled in anger C. I am stained with juice. A’. There was no one to... Read more
Tom Engelhardt knows that wars can be won and that won wars can change geopolitical conditions: “don’t think for a moment that war never solved a problem, or achieved a goal for an imperial or other regime, or that countries didn’t regularly find victory in arms. History is filled with such examples.” Engelhardt also observes that despite our military funding, technology, and skill we haven’t achieved this for a long, long time: “The U.S. military has not won a serious engagement since World... Read more
With surprising regularity, Paul uses material images, often to describe his ministry to the churches. He and his helpers are like nurses to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 2:7). He is a laboring woman in Galatia (4:19), and he nurses the Corinthians with milk, since they are infants in Christ (1 Corinthians 3:1-2). He himself is an infant (1 Thessalonians 2:7), sanctified like Jeremiah from the womb (Galatians 1:15) but a miscarried fetus (1 Corinthians 15:8). Beverly Gaventa’s Our Mother Saint Paul... Read more
David leads the ark procession into Jerusalem wearing a linen ephod (1 Samuel 6). He offers sacrifices after every six paces, gets the ark into a tent, and when it’s all done he blesses the people. He functions in this rite as a royal priest, the chief “layman” in Israel. It’s significant that he wears a linen ephod. Israel’s high priests were normally dressed in garments made from a holy mixture of wool, linen, and gold thread. Only on the... Read more
Bernard Suits (The Grasshopper, 24) begins his effort to define the nature of games by distinguishing games and play from work, defined as technical activity that aims to achieve an end in the most efficient way possible. Distinguishing the two is more difficult that it might appear, and Suits argues for the surprising but compelling conclusion that games are more not less rule-governed than work: “seem to stand in a peculiar relation to ends. The end in poker is not... Read more
Samantha Melamed reports that young men today are no longer satisfied with a handshake: “more men are embracing, well, embracing.” Melamed writes, “The rise in hugging can be directly traced to declines in homophobia, according to Mark McCormack, a University of Durham (England) sociologist who has studied the behavior of young men in the United States and the United Kingdom. “‘These guys don’t care whether other people perceive them as gay. In the ’80s and ’90s, if you were perceived as gay,... Read more
John sees a strong angel descending from heaven (Revelation 10:1). It’s not just an angelophany; it’s a theophany, a Christophany. That’s evident from the fact that, like the throne of God itself, his head is surrounded by the rainbow (cf. 4:3). His head is in the place where the Enthroned One is, and that can only mean that this “strong angel” is in fact the Throne in Person, who is the Lamb. Besides, He is clothed in a cloud, like... Read more
In their editorial introduction to Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions, Christian Frevel and Christophe Nihan question the common distinction between “moral” and “ritual” impurity, and the popular claim that purity rules were evolved in a “spiritualized” direction. They admit that purity means different things in different contexts, and that the language of purity is applied to moral concerns, but even when purity is used in an ethical sense, it usually retains a religious or “cultic” orientation: “The separation of... Read more
Walton and Sandy (The Lost World of Scripture) define science as “an understanding of the material world derived from an empirical process and operating according to naturalistic premises” (50). Given that definition, it’s hardly surprising that they conclude that “the Bible’s illocutions do not offer scientific description or explanation” (51). It’s an airtight logic: Science is naturalistic; the Bible gives “theological perspective about the material world”; therefore, the Bible “does not give us any naturalistic insight” or fresh scientific information... Read more
Robert Ellis (Games People Play) has a lot of critical things to say about sports, but the aim of his book is to analyze and ultimately to defend sports in theological terms. He’s comfortable with the Victorian Settlement. He does that in part by correlating the results of his own survey about why people play sports with various religious experiences (borrowed partly from William James). Players describe sports as rejuvenating, a regenerating activity; they are deeply communal, like religious rituals;... Read more
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