So. I picked up a book the other day, The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America , a sprightly narrative about a group of Harvard professors from the 1960s/70s who experimented with hallucinogens by feeding them to students. Timothy Leary was the most famous. They got canned. One of them went off to India, came under the influence of a Hindu guru, changed... Read more
INTRODUCTION Jesus death was not the end of His ministry, and neither is His resurrection. He rises to commission His disciples to carry on His work to the Gentiles. “Go” said the angel; “go,” Jesus repeated to the women; now, again, “Go” (28:7, 10, 19). THE TEXT “Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened . . . .” (Matthew 28:11-20). (more…) Read more
In his comments on Zechariah 4:7, Stead notes that the adjective connected with stone is unique in the Hebrew Bible. It looks like a feminine of the common word ro’sh (head) but might also be linked to ri’shon (first, beginning). Stead opts for “topstone” as a translation, and says that the prophecy is about Zerubbabel’s completion of the temple. He also notes the connection with Psalm 118:22, which describes a “stone” that becomes “head of the corner,” an event that... Read more
Bart Bruehler points out in an article from CBQ that the oracle to Zerubbabel in Zechariah 4:7 employs language (“might and power”) typically used to describe military prowess. Yet Zerubbabel doesn’t lead an army; he organizes a construction project. He is a new Solomon. Moses said to Joshua, “Be strong and courageous” before Joshua conquered the land; David said to Solomon, “Be strong and courageous” because Solomon was going to need “might and power” to build the temple. The Davidic... Read more
Stead again. He points out the intertextual connections between Zechariah 4:7 and Isaiah 40:4, 42:16. In all these passages, mountains are being brought low. One of the remarkable contrasts is that in Isaiah (especially 42:16), Yahweh Himself levels mountains; in Zechariah, Zerubbabel carries out the demolition. What are the mountains? Stead points to passages that address various world powers as mountains (Isaiah 41:11-15; Jeremiah 51:25; one might add the mountain that fills the whole earth in Daniel 2), and concludes... Read more
Michael Stead ( The Intertextuality of Zechariah 1-8 (Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies) ) the golden lampstand of Zechariah 4 is not Yahweh nor Israel but the temple. He notes that verses 2-3 provide a vision that verses 6-14 answer, in the same sequence. In verses 2-3, the prophet sees a lampstand, with seven lamps, and two olive trees beside it. In the interpretation, the angel says that Zerubbabel will complete the house (v. 9), explains the seven lamps... Read more
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Shakespeare’s Troilus stated the dilemma of desire with poetic concision: “The desire is boundless, but the act is a slave to limit.” Human desire is indeed boundless, and that is so deeply embedded in human existence that it is hard to imagine human beings otherwise. According to Troilus, this only means we are bound to be frustrated and dissatisfied. Boundless desire has to settle for limit in act, and that means that our freedom is resolved into slavery. The only... Read more
Jenson notes that the university arose as a place of discourse, an institution centered on the word, and adds that “Mediterranean antiquity’s specific ideal of knowledge would never by itself have made the university. The organ of truth, in the classic tradition, is the ‘mind’s eye’; knowledge is theoria , seeing .” In practice, philosophy took a different track: Socrates and Plato conversed , and this not only “rescued Greek theoria from the inhumanity that was always its temptation,” but... Read more
Robert Jenson ( Essays in Theology of Culture ) gives this clever summary of the work of Alasdair McIntyre: “MacIntyre ended [After Virtue] by saying that what our civilization must have to survive is something like the Benedictine order. Many who read this wondered how there could be Benedictines without St. Benedict, or a saint without God. MacIntyre appears to have read his own book and wondered the same things, whereupon he reconverted to the faith.” Read more
Leithart
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