Nostalgia for Madonna

Not surprisingly, Miley Cyrus’s erotic performance at the MTV awards left Camille Paglia thinking whistfully about the young Madonna. Cyrus’s antics are “symptomatic of the still heavy influence of Madonna.” But these kids, they’re nothing like the old master: . . . . Continue Reading »

Book in the mouth

Yahweh exhorts Joshua to keep the law and meditate ( hagah ) on it day and night (Joshua 1:7-8). The book is to be in his mouth constantly; like the prophets Ezekiel and John, he is to chew the book of the law for breakfast and dinner. Making the Word of Yahweh his food will lead to prosperity, . . . . Continue Reading »

Disenchantment of sex

Jody Bottum’s Catholic case for same-sex marriage gets this right: The sexual revolution was a war on the meaningfulness of sex, and in the aftermath of that revolution’s utter victory, we have no cultural resources to oppose same-sex marriage: “if heterosexual monogamy so lacks . . . . Continue Reading »

Stones of nothing

Yahweh is going to bring a day of vengeance and recompense on behalf of Zion, Isaiah prophesies (Isaiah 34). He will take up Zion’s complaint, her case ( rib ) against the Edomites, and will devastate that nation. Nothing is left standing when the Lord’s sword has finished its slaughter . . . . Continue Reading »

Theology Overcomes Metaphysics

The end of metaphysics is old news, Robert Alan Sparling reminds us in Johann Georg Hamann and the Enlightenment Project : “It is one of the Enlightenment’s enduring legacies to reject both faith and ‘obscure metaphysics’ in the same breath. This post-metaphysical aspect of . . . . Continue Reading »

David in Ruth and Psalms

Ruth is the only book of the Tanakh that ends with a genealogy, notes Stephen Dempster ( Dominion and Dynasty: A Biblical Theology of the Hebrew Bible , 193). The “ten-member genealogy powerfully echoes two other ten-member genealogies in the narrative books that had soteriological . . . . Continue Reading »

Israel and nations

Stephen Dempster ( Dominion and Dynasty: A Biblical Theology of the Hebrew Bible ) points to the various ways that the end of Genesis anticipates the blessing of Israel flowing to Gentiles. When Jacob moves to Goshen, Joseph introduces him to Pharaoh. What ensues is “not just two individuals . . . . Continue Reading »

Egypt’s Christians

Kirsten Powers reports on the attacks on Christians in Egypt , described by one Egyptian scholar as “the worst violence against the Coptic Church since the 14th century”: “USA Today reports that “forty churches have been looted and torched, while 23 others have been attacked . . . . Continue Reading »