For the next several weeks, I will be picking up where I left off in Matthew, in chapter 24, the “Olivet Discourse.” I will take the position that Jesus’ prophecy is not about the end of the world or His final coming, but about the destruction of the Old Covenant that took place in A.D. 70. When Christians first hear this, they begin to worry: If the events Jesus predicts already took place nearly 2000 years ago, isn’t this passage... Read more
Scattered, inconclusive remarks on the prohibition of brother-sister incest in Leviticus 18 and 20. A number of the relations prohibited in these chatpers recall relationships that existed among the patriarchs. Leviticus 18:11 prohibits a man from taking his half-sister, the daughter of your father. That is exactly the relationship of Abraham and Sara. In Genesis 20:12, Abraham explains to Abimelech that “she actually is my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother, and she... Read more
Feminists, rightly, attack the nymphet/Lolita treatment of incest, in which middle-aged father figures are victimized by precociously sexualized teens or pre-teens, as well as by their bitchy, frigid wives. This is the initial setup for the film American Beauty , though in the end the father figure refuses to consummate his desire and reverts to a father-figure when he discovers the object of his lust is a virgin. But the film invests so much style into making the nymphet captivating... Read more
Leavings from a paper on Leviticus 18. Leviticus 18 is a chiastic structure consisting of smaller chiasms. 18:1 is an introductory formula, announcing the beginning of a new section of Leviticus. Verses 2-5 form the first section of the chapter, which repeats “I am Yahweh” three times and also contains a neat small-chiasm of judgment/statutes around the central declaration of the Lord’s Name. A. I am Yahweh your God B. Do not do what Egypt and Canaan do C. Do... Read more
From the introduction to Ellen Pollak’s Incest and the English Novel, 1684-1814 : According to Derrida, the prohibition against incest is “the unstable center of structuralist thought.” But in Derrida’s hands, it becomes “the condition of the possibility of meaning.” As Pollak explains it, Derrida’s “sexual fable of the production of meaning” treats incest as “the ever-elusive condition of pure presence, whose endless deferral (differance) through prohibition is the locus of that orioginary lack on which the entire order of... Read more
In her study of Incest and the Medieval Imagination , Elizabeth Archibald notes that medieval clerical writers were far more open about incest and incestuous desire than moderns have been until very recently: “On might have expected that the medieval church would have avoided telling stories about incest for fear of putting dangerous ideas into people’s heads. On the other hand, to be plausible and powerful, cautionary tales should bear a strong resemblance to real-life situations, must be recognizable as... Read more
At the end of 2 Corinthians 6, Paul quotes a series of Old Testament texts in support of his exhortation, “Do not be bound together with unbelievers.” God’s temple has no agreement with idols, and the Christian and the church are temples (v. 16). The church fulfills Yahweh’s promise to dwell and walk among His people (v. 16b; quoting Leviticus 26:12 among other passages). Because the Lord dwells in the church, Christians must “come out from their midst and be... Read more
Hosea’s daughter is named Lo-ruhamah (1:6), and the Lord explains that her name signifies that He “will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel.” Lo-ruhamah means “no compassion.” But the word ruhamah is linked to the Hebrew word for “womb”; as many have pointed out, Yahweh’s compassion is “wombliness,” the compassion of a mother for a child she has birthed. Yahweh removes His motherly compassion from Israel, and Hosea’s daughter is a sign of that. Hosea 1:6 might... Read more
I came across a reference to James Risen and Judy L. Thomas’s 1998 Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War in a recent article in the Weekly Standard . It’s a riveting account of the development of anti-abortion activism and extremism. It focuses a good deal of attention on the work of Operation Rescue from the late 1980s to its fracturing in the early 1990s. Its account of the internal squabbles in Operation Rescue makes for grim reading, and the... Read more
David L. Baker’s recent Tight Fists or Open Hands?: Wealth and Poverty in Old Testament Law is a thorough and judicious introduction to the Pentateuch’s teaching on economics. The book has a limited scope. Baker largely ignores the contemporary economic situation, and gives comparatively little attention to recent works in theology and economics, and does not go into detail on prophetic texts. He focuses instead on economic texts in the law, and compares Israel’s economic regulations to those of surrounding... Read more
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