Matthew doesn’t know where to put his “fulfillment formulae.” In chapter 2, he quotes Hosea when Jesus is leaving Israel; in chapter 21, he quotes Zechariah 9 before Jesus has climbed aboard the double-donkey mount. Jesus gives instructions to His disciples (vv. 2-3, then there’s a quotation from Zechariah (vv. 4-5), then the disciples do as Jesus tells them (v. 6-7a), and only then does Jesus mount up (v. 7b). You’d think the quotation would come after verse 7, but... Read more
The verb “fulfill” is used some 18 times in Matthew’s gospel, and 14 of those uses describe Jesus’ fulfllment of something spoken by the prophets or by “Scripture.” A double of the number of creation, Jesus brings a new creation; God spoke over seven days to create, and His spoken word is fulfilled 14 times to recreate. Most of these are fulfillments with a twist. Jesus fulfills Hosea’s prophecy about a new exodus by leaving Israel and heading to Egypt.... Read more
To the right of this page is an icon of a book cover for a biography of Jane Austen. I wrote that book. Really, I did. But you can’t have it, not yet. The publisher, Cumberland House, has been forced to sell out, and the buyer didn’t buy my book. I’m exploring other possibilities, but the book, already delayed a year, is being delayed again, for how long is anybody’s guess. Someday, somehow, I’ll get Jane out of limbo. Read more
The Commerce Department tells us this morning that the GDP grew during 2008, though at the slowest pace since 2001. It shrank faster during the fourth quarter than at any time since 1982. Funny, nobody in Congress is raising the spectre of 1982 to describe our economic woes. It’s always 1929. They must have long memories. Or maybe they find some value in blowing up the scale of the crisis? Maybe they’ve found some uses for panic. Read more
Do we murder the poor when we abuse them? James thinks so. At the beginning of chapter 5, he sharply rebukes the rich, reminding them that they have not paid the laborers who mowed their fields (v. 3). Like Abel’s blood, the laborers “cry out against you, and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth” (v. 4), that is, the “Lord of Armies.” Untimely pay seems a minor oversight. Not... Read more
James says that the law is a mirror. We think he means that we read the law, it shows us flaws and blemishes, and we are convicted of sin. That’s not the way the image works in James. The man who looks in a mirror and turns away is not the one who hears the law and ignores his sin. He’s the man who hears the law and doesn’t do it (1:23-24). Hearing and not obeying is like glancing and... Read more
Julian “the Apostate” saw how the Christian church grew “due to philanthropy to strangers, burial of the dead and seeming purity of life.” Pagans needed to catch up, and this meant charity: “In every city,” he ordered, “numerous hostels should be established that strangers, whether or not of our faith, may experience our philanthropy whenever they need it.” And, “Teach the adherents of our religion to add voluntary contrubitions and accustom them to philanthropy. It is shameful when our poor... Read more
No American writer of the last fifty years even approximated the luxuriance of John Updike. In its lengthy obit, the NYT cites this from an early short story: “Snow fell against the high school all day, wet big-flake snow that did not accumulate well. Sharpening two pencils, William looked down on a parking lot that was a blackboard in reverse; car tires had cut smooth arcs of black into the white, and wherever a school bus had backed around, it... Read more
“One cannot serve God and the Emperor,” Tertullian wrote. Early Christians were anti-imperial then? Not necessarily. When Celsus charged that Christians would leave the Emperor alone against the barbarians, Origen protested: “We help the emperor in his extremities by our prayers and intercessions more effectively than do the soldiers. Just as the priests must keep their hands unsullied for sacrifice, so also must the Christians, who are all priests and servants of God, keep their hands unstained by blood that... Read more
Early Christians did not call for abolition, and even after the empire became Christian much of the traditional Roman social structure remained in place. Yet, Hermann Dorries writest that Christianity provided Constantine and the Christian emperors who followed with “the possibility of gradual amelioration.” Considering the central economic importance of slavery, and considering the dehumanized views of slaves widely (not universally) held by pagans, the amazing thing, Dorries says, is that “the Christian faith could dare to cut into the... Read more
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