Category: The Bible as Literature

Self-styled students of the Bible often impose personal arguments on their study of the text. In some cases, this problem is obvious, for example, when religious thinkers take sides on either side of the culture wars, or when political thinkers assume their ideological conviction or political stance is somehow “scriptural.” It gets nastier when our…

Zacharias was silenced for speaking his own words. Words that build defend and secure the things that serve Herod’s agenda: a thriving community centered by a bountiful temple life. Everyone believes in and worships this agenda as much as, if not more, than the Romans prayed to their emperors. In reality, the two idols are…

Institutional thinking has no comprehension of personal loyalty. Fierce loyalty. The kind you don’t get to choose. The kind you are born under. Like someone in Luke born under the authority of Zacharias. That someone doesn’t get to choose another priest any more than a sheep could a shepherd; or a slave their patrician; or…

Regurgitate. To throw up or vomit; to eject what has previously been swallowed. To repeat verbatim. (https://www.synonyms.com/synonym/Regurgitate) Unless you happen to be Jonah, it’s not an exciting prospect, and even then, not preferable—but, beginning with Ezekiel, the Father of Scripture, it’s the DNA of the biblical text: “Then he said to me, ‘Son of man,…

When Americans think of a “neighborhood,” the first thing that comes to mind is “value.” What type of homes are in the area? What size? How old? What amenities? What facilities are nearby? Notice that we have taken a term that refers to the generational fellowship of a community of human families and repurposed it…

When Mary proclaims the Lord’s help toward his servant Israel, it’s easy to reduce her prayer to yet another platitude about mercy from our perspective, elevating Israel in human terms. We like to do this because—let’s face it—we identify with Israel. Oddly enough, in Scripture, we should identify with them, but not how you think….

The difficult teaching of Ecclesiastes warns us that all people share the same fate. This wisdom is pervasive in Scripture, from the violent imagery found in Deuteronomy to the razor’s edge of Paul’s argument in Romans. There is no difference between Jew and Greek; between the wise man and the fool; between the righteous and…

Having established that God—not herself—is her only reference, Mary moves to the next logical step from Scripture’s perspective: the proclamation of the fear of God. The terrible might of God; that the mere mention of his name strikes fear and brings the hope of mercy: mercy to those once enslaved and humiliated like Mary. In…

When someone of authority speaks, it is only natural for people of lessor status to use his words to establish their position. Politicians do it, corporate underlings do it, and Christians do it in their mishandling of the Bible. When God speaks in Scripture, his words come down from above. We plagiarize. We want to…

As the Spirit moves through chapter one of the Gospel of Luke, it exhibits its power as a mechanism of destruction but also as an implement of God’s control—prompting one to submit, teaching another to bless, and causing the Lord’s prophet to rejoice, even from his mother’s womb. The first to be filled with the…