The erotic intensity of the Song is, these days, an argument against allegorizing. Walsh rightly argues the opposite: “Desire for an absent lover pulsates throughout eight chapters in a heady mixture of glee, frustration, exhaustion, and surrender. Experientially, readers would be . . . . Continue Reading »
What Carey Walsh calls the “jumpiness” of the Song ( Exquisite Desire ) has sometimes been taken as evidence of multiple authorship or sloppy editing. Walsh claims it is deliberate, a literary depiction of the desire that is the content of the Song. It is, as Walsh says, . . . . Continue Reading »
Given the high view of marriage and sexuality in Scripture, Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians are odd and out of character. Why would Paul think it good for everyone to be as he is? Jeremiah 16 provides a clue. In verse 2, Yahweh instructs Jeremiah not to take a wife or raise . . . . Continue Reading »
In Genesis 20, Abimelech takes Sarah. In chapter 21, Isaac is born and Hagar is sent away. At the end of chapter 21, though, Abimelech is back, and Abraham brings up a complaint against Abimelech about the seizure of his wells. As Larry Lyke notes, “Following the events of . . . . Continue Reading »
In his book on Gregory of Nyssa ( Presence and Thought: Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa (A Communio Book) ), von Balthasar contrasts Nyssa’s epistemology with that of Zeno and the Stoics. Zeno described a progression of thought under the image of the hand: an open . . . . Continue Reading »
What is Galatians about? Augustine says that the question at stake was how to induct Gentiles into the people of God. Paul circumcised Timothy, since “these rites and traditions [of Judaism] were not harmful to people born and raised in that way,” but for those who came from . . . . Continue Reading »
Augustine famously declared that the sacraments are bodily things and actions that function as “certain visible words.” Sacraments are word-like, but operate in the visual rather than the audible sphere. And the analogy between the two is often taken to be communication: Words teach us . . . . Continue Reading »
Why do men (almost always men) expose themselves to strangers? The redoubtable Diane Ackerman ( A Natural History Of Love ) suggests that what happens after the victim shrieks and runs reveals the motivations: “The flasher rarely runs away. Flashing the woman fills only the smallest . . . . Continue Reading »
Song of Songs 5:2 (as Albert Cook points out in The Root of the Thing ) says, “the voice of dodi knocking,” implying that the voice itself has become personified and seeks entry to the bride’s chamber. Then we allegorize, in light of Revelation 3:20, where it is Jesus who knocks . . . . Continue Reading »
Larry Lyke ( I Will Espouse You Forever: The Song of Songs and the Theology of Love in the Hebrew Bible ) notes the use of the word “skirts” (Heb. shwl ) in Lamentations 1:9, and comments that outside Jeremiah, Nahum, and Lamentations the term “is always used in reference to . . . . Continue Reading »
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