Category: The Bible as Literature

In the Gospel of Luke, the news of the forgiveness of sins is the knowledge that John the Baptist was born and commissioned to share with absolute urgency. It is the declaration of the King, meant to be circulated as widely as possible for anyone willing to listen. The news of this forgiveness, contained within…

Throughout the story of Scripture, it is the Lord who delivers his people from their enemies. This deliverance is not about victory in the conventional sense, where one group of human beings claims victory against another. On the contrary, it is God, in his unparalleled position of strength, who puts down all sides, leaving everyone,…

In tribal experience, as in American mythology, life originates with the forefather. How often on this program have we mentioned the blasphemous depiction of George Washington seated in glory, riding upon the clouds, flanked by the angelic hosts? In this sense, the Capital Rotunda is a kind of Platonic Fold: an event horizon where the…

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…