Euhemerism - the belief that ancient gods were original human beings - was popular during the early modern period, and most euhemerists were biblical euhemerists, keen to show how pagan myths grew out of biblical characters and episodes.Samuel Bochart was a master, relying on etymological . . . . Continue Reading »
Adopting a Hebraic literary technique, Revelation 1:9-20 repeats key words.“Voice” (phone) is used four times. John hears a voice (v. 10), turns to see it (v. 12), and the central feature of the glorified being he sees is a “voice” like the “voice” of many waters . . . . Continue Reading »
Why Sochi for the Olympics. Christian Caryl explains that it’s Putin’s declaration of victory over Chechen rebels, the subjugation of the northern Caucasus:“Russia launched its Olympic bid in 2006, a moment when Putin was basking in his hard-won status as the leader who had . . . . Continue Reading »
In an essay in Temple in Antiquity, John Lundquist outlines some features of the common temple ideology of the Ancient Near East. Among these, he argues, is the tree of life, “an integral part of the ‘primordial landscape’” that temples reproduced.From this, it was a . . . . Continue Reading »
Some years ago, Richard Bauckham wrote superb book on Revelation, The Climax of Prophecy. It contained nine references to John’s gospel.A recent collection of papers in honor of the dean of Johannine studies, Raymond Brown, contained only a handful of references to Revelation, all in a . . . . Continue Reading »
Drawing on the work of Matthias Klinghardt, Claudio Carvalhaes (Eucharist and Globalization, 37-8) claims that in the Greco-Roman world the term koinonia had the primary meaning of “meal community.”He adds, “Within the meal communities the values of society were upheld, . . . . Continue Reading »
If you read about a character who visited friends one day and stormed in like a thundercloud the next, who visited unexpectedly and shared a meal but then withdrew into a closed palace, who blew smoke from his nostrils and then spoke with magnificent gentleness and compassion, you’d be . . . . Continue Reading »
In his 1844 sermon on Catholic unity, John Williamson Nevin steered carefully around the paradox of a unified church divided by denominations.On the one hand, he insisted that the church’s unity must take outward, visible, social form. As a soul without a body is disfigured, so inward . . . . Continue Reading »
Nevin (Catholic Unity) knows the arguments for denominationalism:“We frequently hear apologies made for the existence of sects in the Church. They are said to be necessary. The freedom and purity of the Church, we are told, can be maintained only in this way. They provoke each other to zeal . . . . Continue Reading »
Trusting in the Bible’s depictions of the unified church, and hopeful in Christ’s own prayer for the unity of His disciples, Nevin insisted (Catholic Unity) that the fragmentation of the church could not possibly be permanent:“Can any one suppose, that the order of things which now . . . . Continue Reading »
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