It’s one of the most famous lines in one of the most famous songs: “You spread a table before me in the presence of my enemies” (Psalm 23). Israel knows very well that this is what Yahweh the Shepherd does. This is how Israel was born as a people – by slaughtering a Passover lamb or goat, spreading blood, and feasting in the midst of their Egyptian enemies. Also at Sinai: Yahweh cuts covenant with Israel, and the ceremony ends... Read more
It’s one of the most famous lines in one of the most famous songs: “You spread a table before me in the presence of my enemies” (Psalm 23). Israel knows very well that this is what Yahweh the Shepherd does. This is how Israel was born as a people – by slaughtering a Passover lamb or goat, spreading blood, and feasting in the midst of their Egyptian enemies. Also at Sinai: Yahweh cuts covenant with Israel, and the ceremony ends... Read more
Sacramental interpretations of the blood and water from Jesus’ side are too tempting to resist. We ought not resist them. Of course, it is the blood of the new covenant and the water of baptism (John 20:34). But the order brings us up short: Not water and blood, but blood and water. That comes from something other than sacramental imagery. Of course is comes from the Old Testament, where Israel is redeemed by blood and then by water – first... Read more
Sacramental interpretations of the blood and water from Jesus’ side are too tempting to resist. We ought not resist them. Of course, it is the blood of the new covenant and the water of baptism (John 20:34). But the order brings us up short: Not water and blood, but blood and water. That comes from something other than sacramental imagery. Of course is comes from the Old Testament, where Israel is redeemed by blood and then by water – first... Read more
Erhard Gerstenberger (Leviticus, 34) claims that “The completely burned sacrifice is probably an Israelite peculiarity.” James Watts (Ritual and Rhetoric) disagrees. He argues (75) that “The practice of burning offerings gained popularity during the first millennium and spread from its original home in northwest Syria. Burnt offerings clearly played a central role in Phoenician rituals of the early first millennium b.c.e., and theywere exported by the Phoenicians to their colonies across theMediterranean, and perhaps to Greece as well. References to burnt offerings and depictions of burning... Read more
Hosea (2:14-20) allegorizes the exodus as a love story. Yahweh lures Israel from Egypt to the wilderness, speaks to her heart, becomes her ‘ish (man) and no longer her Baal (lord, or Baal). Yahweh is promising to take Israel out to the wilderness for a second honeymoon, but that implies that the first wilderness excursion was a honeymoon too. Israel starts out its Egyptian sojourn in Goshen, a fertile garden-land suitable for shepherds where Israel is fruitful and multiplies. Eventually, Israel... Read more
Israel was forbidden to eat serpent-like creatures who were in the curse-prosecuting dust, crawling on their “bellies” like the snake in the garden (Leviticus 11:42; cf. Genesis 3:14). Christians believe that was not a permanent prohibition. In the new covenant, all foods are available, even serpentine ones (Acts 10-11). Why the change? Israel was in a state of infancy; they were babies who could digest only milk. In Christ, the people of God reach majority (Galatians 3-4), and so are... Read more
Too much of the discussion of nature and the supernatural is conducted in the idiom of Aristotle rather than the Bible. Most obviously, for Scheeben, Rahner, and even de Lubac (though to a lesser extent), the issue is framed as a question concerning the constitution of human “nature” or the make-up of the “creature,” whereas the Bible reveals a particular being in particular circumstances, who is given the proper-generic name Adam. It is more fruitful to work out human nature... Read more
Too much of the discussion of nature and the supernatural is conducted in the idiom of Aristotle rather than the Bible. Most obviously, for Scheeben, Rahner, and even de Lubac (though to a lesser extent), the issue is framed as a question concerning the constitution of human “nature” or the make-up of the “creature,” whereas the Bible reveals a particular being in particular circumstances, who is given the proper-generic name Adam. It is more fruitful to work out human nature... Read more
Leo Oppenheim (Ancient Mesopotamia, 191-2) observed that the “difference that separates the sacrificial rituals in [Mesopotamia and the West] is the ‘blood consciousness’ of the West, its awareness of the magic power of blood, which is not paralleled in Mesopotamia.” Burning was another key difference: “The Old Testament concept is best expressed by the burning of the offered food, a practice which had the purpose of transforming it from one dimension—that of physical existence—into another, in which the food became assimilable... Read more
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