Peter J. Leithart

Mary and the other Mary come to the tomb on the day “after the Sabbath,” which is the first day of the new week.  It is beginning to dawn and light is beginning to shine.  Now, a new week begins, new light breaks. But Matthew’s phrasing is even more emphatic on this . . . . Continue Reading »

From an interview with Vera Pavlova: “Prose is addition in line, poetry is multiplication in column.” . . . . Continue Reading »

The angel rolls away the stone from Jesus’ tomb and takes a seat on it.  It’s an enthronement, but there’s something more. In Exodus 17, Moses sits down on a stone while Aaron and Hur hold up his hands.  Joshua fights in the valley below, filling the ground with . . . . Continue Reading »

Jesus’ body is placed in a tomb and a “great stone” rolled in front of it.   Can He move the stone? That is to say: Is He truly a greater Jacob, who set up a stone where angels descended (Genesis 28:18), who rolled away a large stone to open a well for Rachel the shepherdess . . . . Continue Reading »

Heaven and earth are key themes in Matthew’s gospel (see Jonathan Pennington’s  Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew ).  The two words are used in combination eight times in the gospel, and those uses fall out into a nearly chiastic pattern: A. Heaven and earth pass away, . . . . Continue Reading »

Matthew is up to something with his use of two different words for “tomb” in the narratives of Jesus’ burial and resurrection.  The two words are mnemeion and taphos , and the 9 uses in the closing chapters of Matthew are deliberately patterned: mnemeion , 4x: 27:52, 53, 60 . . . . Continue Reading »

Matthew 28 is arguably constructed with two intertwine chiasms.  The first covers verses 1-8, and the second goes from verse 9 through the end of the chapter. The first follows this pattern: A. Women arrive at grave, v 1 B. Angel descends from heaven, vv 2-3 C. Guards become like dead, v 4 . . . . Continue Reading »

Looking back, one cannot help but be struck by the seemingly symbiotic relationship existing between the state, military power, and the private economy’s efficiency in the age of absolutism. Behind every successful dynasty stood an array of opulent banking families. Access to such bourgeois . . . . Continue Reading »

Erich Fromm describes the condition of late modern humanity: “well fed, well clad, satisfied sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact with his fellow men, guided by slogans which Huxley formulated so succinctly, such as: ‘When the individual feels, the . . . . Continue Reading »

Karl Polanyi ( The Great Transformation ) notes, “There was nothing natural about laissez-faire ; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course.  Just as the cotton manufactures - the leading free trade industry - were created by the help of . . . . Continue Reading »