Peter J. Leithart

In a 1986 article in Semeia , Jerome Neyrey examines the role of purity in Mark’s gospel against the background of Mary Douglas’s work. Importantly, he emphasizes that, while Mark shows how Jesus transgresses the boundaries of purity, he also shows that Jesus is the “Holy . . . . Continue Reading »

Nietzsche again (Daybreak, 483): ” Weariness of mankind, —A: Know thou! Yes! But always in the human form! How? Am I always to watch the same comedy, act in the same comedy, without ever being able to see the things with other eyes than these? And yet there may bo innumerable species of . . . . Continue Reading »

In The Gay Science (39), Nietzsche comments on the importance of changes in taste in philosophy and science: “The alteration of the general taste is more important than the alteration of opinions; opinions, with all their proving, refuting, and intellectual masquerade, are merely symptoms of . . . . Continue Reading »

In a 1995 article, Lance Janda argues that the US applied a policy of “total war” during the Civil War, and later used the same methods in the Indian wars: “if ‘total war. is defined as using ‘military force against the civilian population of the enemy,’ then the . . . . Continue Reading »

In his essay on the hemorrhaging woman (Matthew 10) in The Social Setting of Jesus and the Gospels , Stuart Love points out that in Matthew Jesus addresses only two women with a gendered word, as “daughter” or “woman.” The first is the woman with the 12-year flow of blood, a . . . . Continue Reading »

Graham Twelftree ( In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism among Early Christians ) argues that there is not political dimension to the gospel story of Jesus and the Legion demoniac. Contrary to much contemporary scholarship, “legio” did not necessarily conjure up the image of Caesar’s . . . . Continue Reading »

Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes this rebuttal to my post summarizing Godbout’s book on gift. Jim quotes these sentences: “First, the dominant paradigm of human behavior is utilitarian. People act out of self-interest, and in that context the gift seems impossible, other-worldly, . . . . Continue Reading »

Song of Songs 2:4-5: He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Sustain me with cakes of raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am lovesick. We domesticate Jesus. He’s a baby in a manger, or a mild-mannered apostle of niceness. If spectacles had been invented in . . . . Continue Reading »

Protestants often find the idea of “deification” unsettling. When we hear “God became man, so that man might become God,” it sounds as if someone has erased the distinction between Creator and creature. But that pithy summary of the gospel comes from Athanasius, a . . . . Continue Reading »

What do worlds with no winter do, Not burned pure by visions of light, No clean slaughter-knife of cold Carving away concupiscence? What do worlds with no winter do, No crystal branches, fairy-white, No silky folds in the landgown, No fallen stars flashing underfoot? What do worlds do, always juicy . . . . Continue Reading »