Kingsmill again. She argues that the anti-mystical trend in Song of Songs interpretation has deprived “the Hebrew Bible of its most sublime expression of the nature of God’s love” and thus left “a void into which the spirit of Marcion has inevitably stepped, with . . . . Continue Reading »
Kingsmill ( The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in Biblical Intertextuality (Oxford Theological Monographs) ) notes that, like Esther, the Song of Songs has no “fully explicit reference to God,” but wisely adds “it has always been the way of poets to avoid explicit . . . . Continue Reading »
Several scholars have written about the interpretation and influence of the Song of Songs during the Middle Ages (Ann Matter, Ann Astell, Denys Turner). So far as I know, no one has done it for the modern world. Edmee Kingsmill’s The Song of Songs and the Eros of God: A Study in . . . . Continue Reading »
In one chapter of his delightful Life of Pi , Yann Martel gives a robust defense of zoos, and a funny critique of the notion that animals consider zoos to be prisons from which they long to escape. From the first pages of the novel, Pi, the narrator, has connected zoology and religion (his . . . . Continue Reading »
Marjorie Garber argues that our view of Romeo and Juliet has been altered by contemporary trends and events. Romeo has become the standard American high school Shakespeare play, and some of its themes and sensibility were taken up by the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s. As a . . . . Continue Reading »
INTRODUCTION Where the Spirit is, there is a temple of God. The Spirit dwells in each of us (1 Corinthians 6:19) and in the church as a whole (Ephesians 2:19-22). When the Spirit dwells in a home, the home becomes a house of the Lord. THE TEXT “And I, brethren, could not speak to . . . . Continue Reading »
During the 1840s, Russian literary culture was overtaken by enthusiasm for French Romantic Socialism, mediated through novelists like George Sand. The extent to which this liberal socialism was a humanistic reduction of Christianity is evident from the creed of V. Belinsky, the arbiter of . . . . Continue Reading »
Joseph Frank ( Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time ) makes the intriguing argument that Dostoevsky’s use of Gogol (especially “The Overcoat”) in Poor Folk is parody, but parody that strengthens rather than undermines the central thematic thrust of Gogol’s work. He writes: . . . . Continue Reading »
At the dedication of the city walls in Nehemiah 12, priests process around the walls carrying and blowing trumpets (vv. 35, 41). Last time we saw priests, trumpets and city walls, they were the walls of Jericho tumblin’ down. At Jericho, priests with trumpets brought down the city walls . . . . Continue Reading »
David Bentley Hart writes somewhere about the revolutionary character of the gospel’s depiction of the tears of Peter after his denial of Jesus. Ancient pagan writers, Hart argues, could only have seen the tears of a fisherman as material for parody, not pathos. This was explicitly the . . . . Continue Reading »
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