First Things RSS Feed - Jon D. Levenson https://www.firstthings.com/author/jon-d-levenson en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:56:20 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/jon-d-levenson 60 Negative Theology https://www.firstthings.com/article/2000/02/negative-theology https://www.firstthings.com/article/2000/02/negative-theology Tue, 01 Feb 2000 00:00:00 -0500 The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective
by james barr
fortress, 715 pages, $40

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]]> Between Liberalism and Orthodoxy https://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/11/between-liberalism-and-orthodoxy https://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/11/between-liberalism-and-orthodoxy Mon, 01 Nov 1999 00:00:00 -0500 Beyond Reasonable Doubt.
By Louis Jacobs.
Littman Library od Jewish Civilizzations. 267 pp. $39.50.

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]]> The Problem with Salad Bowl Religion https://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/12/the-problem-with-salad-bowl-religion https://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/12/the-problem-with-salad-bowl-religion Mon, 01 Dec 1997 00:00:00 -0500 I wonder what my rebbe ancestors would think of me,” writes a young Unitarian Universalist minister in The Burning Bush , the newsletter of the Unitarian Universalists for Jewish Awareness. “Would they be glad for me, proud of me, or shocked at me to hear me recite a bracha , a blessing on Friday night, and then see me in church on Sunday in my robes and stole which has on it a Jewish star and also crosses, symbols of Greek paganism and of nature, a depiction of a deity and a goddess no less?” According to a report in the Forward , a Jewish weekly, other Unitarians are asking the same question as they build sukkot (booths for use in the Feast of Tabernacles), conduct Passover seders, light Hanukkah candles, and participate in their own “High Holiday” services, including blowing the shofar and some observances of Yom Kippur.

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]]> The Bible: Unexamined Commitments of Criticism https://www.firstthings.com/article/1993/02/the-bible-unexamined-commitments-of-criticism https://www.firstthings.com/article/1993/02/the-bible-unexamined-commitments-of-criticism Mon, 01 Feb 1993 00:00:00 -0500 Ten years ago I had an experience that made me vividly aware of the two worlds with which the practitioner of the critical study of the Bible inevitably deals. Reading applications for the doctoral program whose faculty I had only recently joined, I was struck by the frequency on the autobiographical statements of a pattern that a form critic might call the “conversion narrative.” Sometimes this narrative assumed a doubled form, first the conversion into a robust but uncritical Christian faith and then, usually in college or seminary, a second conversion marked by acceptance of the historical-critical method and an abandonment of doctrines of inerrancy and the like, though never of Christianity itself. At other times candidates narrated only a conversion of the first sort or otherwise gave an account of their lives that showed no awareness of the nature of the historical criticism of the Bible, the only approach that our doctoral program utilized. Worried about the suitability of such applicants for the program, I broached the issue to a senior colleague, who immediately sought to allay my anxieties. “Don’t worry,” he said. “A lot of our students start out like that, but they change after they have been here two weeks.”

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]]> The Death of the Goddess https://www.firstthings.com/article/1992/11/the-death-of-the-goddess https://www.firstthings.com/article/1992/11/the-death-of-the-goddess Sun, 01 Nov 1992 00:00:00 -0500 In the Wake of the Goddesses:
Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth
by Tikva Frymer-Kensky
Free Press, 292 pages, $24.95

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]]> The God of Abraham and the Enemies of “Eurocentrism” https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/10/the-god-of-abraham-and-the-enemies-of-eurocentrism https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/10/the-god-of-abraham-and-the-enemies-of-eurocentrism Tue, 01 Oct 1991 00:00:00 -0400 Half a century ago, on March 9, 1940, with the world collapsing into a war that was to exceed the worst nightmare, the great German novelist Thomas Mann delivered a brief radio address entitled “The Dangers Facing Democracy.” “The streamlined, artificial anti-Semitism of our technical age,” warned Mann, “is no end in itself; it is nothing but a wrench to unscrew bit by bit the whole machinery of our civilization.”

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