In response to my earlier post about Walsh’s analysis of Abram’s exodus in Genesis 12, a friend, Kelly Kerr, sent along the following outline of Gen. 12:4-13:18: A. a1. Abram departs Haran (12:4) a2. Abram, Lot, and all their possessions and people acquired while in Haran . . . . Continue Reading »
In one of his entries in Diary of a Writer , Dostoevsky makes this observation about talent: “almost all talented people have a bit of the poet in them, after all - even carpenters, if they are talented. Poetry is, so to say, the inner fire of every talent.” . . . . Continue Reading »
Against Badiou and Zizek, who want to use Paul to defend a generic “universalism” that can become homogenization, John Caputo ( St. Paul among the Philosophers (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) ) argues that the universalism of Paul is more paradoxical, more Kierkegaardian . . . . Continue Reading »
In the table of nations in Genesis 10, we’re told that from the descendants of Japheth, the “coastlands of the nations were divided from their lands” (v. 5). The chapter ends on a similar note: “These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their . . . . Continue Reading »
Walsh notes the unusual repetition of the imperative lek (“go”) in Genesis 12:1: ” lek-leka from your father’s house.” He observes that the only other use of this particular form in the OT comes in Genesis 22:2, where Abraham is told, ” lek-leka to the land . . . . Continue Reading »
Genesis 12:10-20 is clearly an exodus story, but Jerome Walsh ( Style and Structure in Biblical Hebrew Narrative ) points out that the exodus story is told chiastically. The following is a modified version of his outline: A. Abram in Egypt to escape famine, 12:10 B. Sarai taken to harem, . . . . Continue Reading »
Israel’s deliverance from Egypt is a bloody business. At the beginning of the plagues, Yahweh turns the Nile to blood, and in the last plague the Israelites protect themselves by slaughtering lambs and smearing blood on the doorways of their houses. Passover is the beginning of new . . . . Continue Reading »
Exodus 12:7-8: And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. . . . . Continue Reading »
Jacob Schmutz’s contribution to Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of the Twentieth-Century Thomistic Thought (Faith and Reason: Studies in Catholic Theology and Philosophy) is a dense exploration of the development of the theology of pure nature in the context of shifting notions of . . . . Continue Reading »
The relation of language and thought has been a contested issue in philosophy and linguistics for several centuries. Guy Deutscher’s contribution ( Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages ) sorts through what we know and what we don’t know . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
