Leigh Trevaskis offers an intriguing, helpful discussion of the man stoned for blasphemy in Leviticus 24.Recent commentators have emphasized the “mixed” character of the blasphemer - son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father. While acknowledging the importance of that feature of . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s hard to find interesting work on Leviticus 23. It’s easy to find tedious critical dissections of the history of the text.One of the conundrums is in verse 2: First we read about the appointed times of Yahweh. Then at the end of the verse we hear about “my” appointed . . . . Continue Reading »
Yahweh’s pesach is to take place on the fourteenth day of the first (ri’shown) month (Leviticus 23:5). The timing echoes back to the dawn of time.The waters of the flood dried up on the first of the first month (ri’shown). Passover celebrates Israel’s deliverance from the . . . . Continue Reading »
Israel’s feasts both followed the agricultural calendar and reenacted Israel’s past. Passover, Pentecost and Booths celebrated various phases of planting, growth, and harvest.Israel’s feasts reconciled nature with salvation history. The reconciliation was ritual, calendrical.The . . . . Continue Reading »
“Knowledge is a gift,” writes Esther Lightcap Meek (A Little Manual for Knowing, 8).She continues, “Epiphany comes as a surprising encounter equal parts knowing and being known. It could never have been achieved in a systematic or linear fashion. It transforms knower and known. . . . . Continue Reading »
I offer some reflections on the theology of festivityin the Hebrew Bible, focused on Leviticus . . . . Continue Reading »
Thomas Mallon offers some qualified praise to Grace Metalious’s Peyton Place in the NYTBR. He thinks it is several cuts above today’s romance novels.He writes, “Metalious’s writing is mostly undemanding, but it’s also, often . . . not bad. Compared with . . . . Continue Reading »
In his Natural History of Religion, David Hume proposes an evolutionary progress from natural polytheism to more developed monotheism. This, he thinks, is the natural and virtually inevitable progress: “As far as writing or history reaches, mankind, in ancient times, appears universally . . . . Continue Reading »
Protestant problematics about sacraments still run in the background of early modern debates about religion. In response to evidence of similarities between Jewish and “savage” Indian religion, some early modern thinkers argued that the ritual similarities were marginal to . . . . Continue Reading »
Many scholars have concluded that the Jubilee legislation of Leviticus 25 is an idealized portrait of an institution that Israel never practiced. In a 2003 essay in Vetus Testamentum, Lee Casperson takes issue with this viewpoint: “There are extensive parallels in the ancient Near East, . . . . Continue Reading »
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