A number of scholars in the past few decades have studied the parallels between the Song of Songs and Egyptian “love poetry.” These parallels are questionable, but even if we assume they are there, it doesn’t prove the case that several of these scholars want to make – namely, that the Song is exclusively a song of human eros . Egyptian love poetry has the same religious dimensions as have been seen in the Song. In a 1921 article, Aylward... Read more
Does the church have a finished, changeless confession? No. Will it ever? No. Because the Head of the Church is a living Lord, and being alive means having the capacity to surprise (Jenson). As the living Lord, Jesus speaks through and to His church according to her needs, and the world’s. Does this mean that doctrine is a wax nose, a free-for-all? No. Because the living Lord who is Head of the Church is utterly faithful. His Yes is Yes,... Read more
PROVERBS 28:22 Though this verse uses different terminology from Proverbs 28:20, it overlaps with that previous proverb. In both cases, there are observations about the relationship between wealth and hastiness. Verse 20 indicates that the one who makes haste to become rich, who chases dreams of quick prosperity, will end up guilty. Here, the one who rushes to riches is said to have an “evil eye.” What is an evil eye? Eyes are organs of judgment and evaluation in Scripture,... Read more
Kingsmill again. She argues that the anti-mystical trend in Song of Songs interpretation has deprived “the Hebrew Bible of its most sublime expression of the nature of God’s love” and thus left “a void into which the spirit of Marcion has inevitably stepped, with disastrous consequences for our understanding of the Old Testament.” She adds in a footnote, “The book Agape and Eros by Anders Nygren . . . has been damaging not only to the eros motif but also... Read more
Kingsmill ( The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in Biblical Intertextuality (Oxford Theological Monographs) ) notes that, like Esther, the Song of Songs has no “fully explicit reference to God,” but wisely adds “it has always been the way of poets to avoid explicit reference to their subjects, and the poet of the Song uses every device, known and unknown, to keep his meaning hidden from observation.” In fact, she claims that “the principal clue... Read more
Several scholars have written about the interpretation and influence of the Song of Songs during the Middle Ages (Ann Matter, Ann Astell, Denys Turner). So far as I know, no one has done it for the modern world. Edmee Kingsmill’s The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in Biblical Intertextuality (Oxford Theological Monographs) gives some reason to think that the project is worth pursuing. Kingsmill suggests that the claim that God created man male and female... Read more
In one chapter of his delightful Life of Pi , Yann Martel gives a robust defense of zoos, and a funny critique of the notion that animals consider zoos to be prisons from which they long to escape. From the first pages of the novel, Pi, the narrator, has connected zoology and religion (his double major at the University of Toronto), and he closes his defense of zoos by reverting to that theme: “I know zoos are no longer in... Read more
Marjorie Garber argues that our view of Romeo and Juliet has been altered by contemporary trends and events. Romeo has become the standard American high school Shakespeare play, and some of its themes and sensibility were taken up by the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, the play ends up being part of the framework for our interpretation of the play: Romeo affected our conceptions of love, especially young love, and our conceptions of generational... Read more
INTRODUCTION Where the Spirit is, there is a temple of God. The Spirit dwells in each of us (1 Corinthians 6:19) and in the church as a whole (Ephesians 2:19-22). When the Spirit dwells in a home, the home becomes a house of the Lord. THE TEXT “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you... Read more
During the 1840s, Russian literary culture was overtaken by enthusiasm for French Romantic Socialism, mediated through novelists like George Sand. The extent to which this liberal socialism was a humanistic reduction of Christianity is evident from the creed of V. Belinsky, the arbiter of Russian literary tastes during the period: “And there will come a time – I fervently believe it – when no one will be burned, no one will be decapitated, when the criminal will plead for death... Read more
Leithart
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