The Psalmist complains that the “arrogant” lie about him (Psalm 119:69), and these same arrogant have “fat” hearts (v. 70). Fat is normally a positive description in the Bible. Fat is a sign of prosperity; you want your land to be fat and your hills to drip with fatness. I suspect that the same is true here in the Psalm: To say that the arrogant have fat hearts is to say that their prosperity has dulled them.  By contrast, the... Read more

Morales’s The Tabernacle Pre-Figured is an insightful study of the “cosmic mountain ideology” in the Bible, which Morales understands in terms of a progress through the dangerous waters of chaos to the mountain of the Lord’s house for the purpose of worship.  At points, though, Morales collapses and conflates when it would be better to distinguish. For instance, he characterizes the garden of Eden as the “holy of holies” that was set at the “top” of the cosmic mountain of creation... Read more

Water ordeals are a common mythical and ritual theme in the Ancient Near east. Hostile waters threaten the life of someone who is trying to cross, and the fact that the person survives the ordeal is a judgment in his favor, a declaration of innocence. Morales (The Tabernacle Pre-Figured, 30) quotes Frank Cross: “The cosmic river springing up from the underworld is also ‘Judge River’ . . . as in Mesopotamia the place of the river ordeal, the place of... Read more

Morales (The Tabernacle Pre-Figured) argues that the trajectory of the creation account in Genesis 1 has not been fully appreciated because the import of the opening verses have not been fully appreciated: “that emphasis is stark enough to serve as the foil for the six days of creation (vv 3-31), counterbalanced by the three-fold description of God’s rest upon completing the heavens and earth (2.1-3). . . . That the deluged earth of v 2 could not sustain life links... Read more

L. Michael Morales’ The Tabernacle Pre-Figured examines a cluster of related themes in the narrative texts of Genesis. The rites of Torah follow the cosmic pattern established in creation, in which one moves through the waters of death to the cosmic mountain in order to offer worship to God the Creator.  Morales sees this “cosmic mountain ideology” at work in the intricate artistry of Genesis 1. The central concern of the creation account, he argues, is not simply the creation of man... Read more

Origen interpreted the instructions about leprosy (Leviticus 13-14) as an “anatomy of spiritual disease” (Elliott, Engaging Leviticus, 132): “There are six types of spiritual plague, which can be taken as three pairs of types – each pair composed of disease that is curable (in this life) and incurable (in this life, though curable in the age to come). Isaiah 1:6 reminds us that superficial ointment treatment will not work and Jeremiah in a number of places teaches that painful scarring can... Read more

Mark W. Elliott’s Engaging Leviticus is a compendium of historical commentary on the book of Leviticus. Organized chapter-by-chapter, Elliott draws together patristic, medieval, and modern commentators, mostly Christian but including some Jewish commentators along the way. That organization creates some difficulties for the reader. Elliott’s book is packed with information, but there is little analysis of the overall shape of the interpretive tradition. If you want to know what commentators have said about the purification of women after childbirth (Leviticus 12)... Read more

Richard Beck responds to my review of his Slavery of Death at the Trinity House site. Read more

Greeks have a reputation for Apollonian rationality and calm, but that’s at best only part of the story. In the NYTBR, Caroline Alexander describes the Dionysian underside of classical Greece: “On Mount Lykaion (‘wolf mountain” in Arcadia, annual traditions honoring Zeus re-enacted a seminal rite of human sacrifice. In Plato’s Republic, the casual observation is made that in Athens anyone who wished to injure an enemy could commission a magician to cast a harmful spell; ‘for with their incantations and... Read more

Protestants have often been charged with promoting an individualist reading of Scripture, what with our confession of sola scriptura. That charge, I submit, arises from a misunderstanding of what the Bible is. In Psalm 119:24, the Psalmist declares his delight in the “testimonies” of Yahweh, and adds that these testimonies are “the men of my counsel.” A serious reader of the Bible is never in a situation of “me and my Bible.” To read the Bible is to enter a... Read more