Peter J. Leithart

Isaiah 22:8-11 is organized roughly as a chiasm: A. He uncovered ( galah ) covering of Judah, v 8a B. You “look” ( navat ) to shields, v 8b C. You see breaches in the citadel, v 9a D. Waters of the lower pool, v 9b E. Houses broken to fill breaches, v 10 D’. Ditch to collect . . . . Continue Reading »

Isaiah says that Judah’s “covering” will be removed (22:8). Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, the word “covering” is used almost exclusively for the tabernacle coverings (22 of the 25 uses of the word occur in Exodus and Numbers). The covering that will be removed in . . . . Continue Reading »

Isaiah describes the leaders of Judah “bound” by enemy archers (22:3). They don’t fall by the sword (v. 2) because they are in disarray, thorough retreat, and so they are vulnerable to weapons that kill from a distance. Isaiah (or Yahweh) mourns for the fallen chiefs, those struck . . . . Continue Reading »

The word “weeping” occurs eight times in Isaiah’s prophecy. Four times the weeping is for Moab (15:2, 3, 5; 16:9). Weeping fills Moab to the four corners. Twice it is weeping for Jerusalem in the “valley of vision” prophecy (Isaiah 22:4, 12), where the speaker weeps . . . . Continue Reading »

Schleiermacher saw language as self-expression. Not unnaturally, on that theory, interpretation of language retraces the path of language back to the source, to the author’s intention. But Schleiermacher’s view of language is of a piece with his liberal experiential-expressivist . . . . Continue Reading »

Gadamer from Truth and Method : “Every age has to understand a transmitted text in its own way . . . The real meaning of a text, as it speaks to the interpreter, does not depend on the contingencies of the author and his original audience. It certainly is not identical with them, for it is . . . . Continue Reading »

In the current issue of The Heythrop Journal , Brian Trainor analyzes the uses of Trinitarian theology among evangelical egalitarians and among evangelical “conservatives.” He finds both wanting, and offers some fresh reflections in an effort to break the impasse. He charges . . . . Continue Reading »

Not Wesleyan Methodism, but against the methodism attacked by Gadamer. As Anthony Thiselton notes (in his essay in The Promise of Hermeneutics ), Gadamer’s life work is summed up in this sentence from a late essay: “It is the Other who breaks into my ego-centredness and gives me . . . . Continue Reading »

Bruce Cumings notes that the architects of the American Century could not have anticipated its most important events: “Never could the Achesons and Stimsons have imagined the fierce energy of aroused colonial peoples in the 1940s, for whom classical imperialism and a recent feudal past were . . . . Continue Reading »

A TLS essay review on recent books on Puritanism offers some helpful insights into that term and the movement it names. Recent work has so qualified and remolded “Puritan” that the term has been deemed all but useless, but the reviewed books indicate that a rehabilitation of the term . . . . Continue Reading »