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Perceptible Righteousness

Last updated on: June 5, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Yahweh won’t rest until Zion’s righteousness and salvation burst out like a flash of lightning. No one will miss it: “Nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory” (Isaiah 62:2). Visible glory make sense. “Glory” is by definition visible in the Bible – the fiery glory cloud of Yahweh, the glory-robes of the priests, the glory of the temple. How how is “righteousness” visible? Perhaps “see” doesn’t mean exactly “see.” Perhaps it means something more like “perceive.” Still,... Read more

Misplaced Outrage

Last updated on: June 5, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Rupert Shortt, author of Christianophobia, complains that the media misreports incidents of Christian persecution: “The battle for sexual equality clearly has a long way to run. But this doesn’t mean that any hardship suffered by a woman can be ascribed to misogyny. The logical false move has been especially blatant in media coverage of Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese Christian sentenced to death for her faith and forced to give birth in chains. “Time and again, reporters and presenters have spoken of the scandal... Read more

Scientific Aesthetes

Last updated on: June 5, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Curtis White observes in The Science Delusion that scientists regularly appeal, without admitting it, to extra-scientific values. Natural selection, Dawkins says, lifts us “to the dizzy heights of complexity, beauty and apparent design that dazzle us today” (quoted p. 16)). Hawking finds the “miracle” of a fit between logic and world “amazing” (17). Not that White blames them for getting all weepy: “I get weepy-eyed over their discoveries. Who can look at images from the Hubble telescope and not feel something... Read more

De-Assyrianization

Last updated on: June 5, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his Babel and Bible, Friedrich Delitzsch pointed to the leftovers of “Sumerian-Babylonian culture” in the modern world – the Zodiac as a system of twelve signs, the circle divided into 360 degrees, the hour divided into sixty minutes and the minutes into sixty seconds (66-7). Babylonian influence is evident not only in science and mathematics, but in religion, and that disturbs Delitzsch: “Many a Babylonian feature has attached itself even to our religious ideas through the medium of the Bible.... Read more

The Bible in the Ancient East

Last updated on: June 4, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Jeffrey J. Niehaus’s Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology is a superb introduction to the subject. In a brief 180 pages, he examines the parallels between Israel and the surrounding Gentiles in their conceptions of God and kinship; their notions of covenant, law and conquest; their views on the design of cities and temples, and the meaning of “image of God”; and the connection of all these themes and institutions with notions of “new creation.” Niehaus doesn’t write in generalities;... Read more

Temple and Apocalypse

Last updated on: June 4, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

John and Gloria Ben-Daniel argue in their The Apocalypse in the Light of the Temple that the temple serves as the “organizing principle” of John’s Apocalypse (4). The background of the book, then, is not Roman persecution of the church but “the destruction of the second Temple in AD 70 and the subsequent reformation of Judaism at Jamnia.” Revelation is “the divine response to the destruction of Jerusalem” (4, fn. 3). They offer some initial observations to make this claim plausible.... Read more

Like Brightness

Last updated on: June 4, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Yahweh’s Servant will rejoice and won’t go silent until: A. Goes forth B. as brightness C. her [Zion’s] righteousness C’. and her salvation (yeshu’a) B’. as a torch A’. burns. Zion’s righteousness and rescue will be light flashing into her darkness, like the brightness (nogah) of Yahweh (2 Samuel 22:13; Habakkuk 3:4, 11), which is like the sunrise (Proverbs 4:18) and the stars (Joel 2:10; 3:15). Zion’s righteousness will be like the brightness of Yahweh’s glory-cloud (Ezekiel 1:4, 13; 27-28),... Read more

Silent Injustice

Last updated on: June 4, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Isaiah uses the verb “be silent” (chashah) seven times. Nearly every time, it is Yahweh who is silent. He has restrained Himself until He cannot hold it in (42:14, 2x), keeping silent so long that Judah began to think they could get away with anything (57:11). For Zion’s sake He (or His Servant) refuses to be quiet (62:1) and He appoints watchmen who are continue speaking without cessation (62:6). When Israel complains that He keeps silent at their affliction (64:12),... Read more

Culture War, Civil War

Last updated on: June 4, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Political histories of the Religious Right miss the underlying ferment that gave rise to the movement, argues Molly Worthen in her recent Apostles of Reason. The eruption was more fundamentally an eruption of tensions within Evangelicalism itself. Worthen argues that Evangelicals are united by three dominant questions: The reconciliation of faith and reason, the desire to know Jesus, and the challenge of public faith in a post-Christendom situation (6). At bottom, these tensions and questions arise from the problem of “intellectual... Read more

Ancient Synaesthesia

Last updated on: June 4, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

“Beyond the visual paradigm” was the challenge issued by the organizers of the symposium that eventually produced the volume Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses, edited by Shane Butler and Alex Purves. In place of a visual paradigm, they wanted to offer a “synaesthetic reading of the ancient world” (2). The contributions to the volume led to two large conclusions: First, there is “a remarkable body of ancient material that regularly crosses sensory lines and blurs any single, simple ‘opticentric’ focus”; second,... Read more

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