Jehu on a Donkey
by Peter J. LeithartJehu is one of those hyper-violent Old Testament characters who make Christians uncomfortable. What could he possibly have in common with Jesus? Continue Reading »
Jehu is one of those hyper-violent Old Testament characters who make Christians uncomfortable. What could he possibly have in common with Jesus? Continue Reading »
Mark Noll’s reliance on a reductive caricature of Protestant political theology causes him to give a false impression of how most colonial American Protestants deployed sacred and secular sources in their political thought. Continue Reading »
A new book collects a wide assortment of Reformers's commentary on some of the most dramatic books of the Old Testament. Continue Reading »
God is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Experience of the Quranby navid kermaniwiley, 400 pages, $45According to the Islamic doctrine of iʿjāz, the Qur’an is an inimitable book, a miracle. Western scholars, pointing out grammatical errors and other infelicities in the text, have long criticized this . . . . Continue Reading »
Which version of the Bible to read is an argument too precious for many who no longer read—anything! The renaissance of biblical learning at the Reformation was accompanied by the founding of schools and instruction in basic literacy. Such is increasingly our task once again. Continue Reading »
In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783by mark a. nolloxford, 448 pages, $29.95 B iblical images, idioms, and verses are everywhere in early American historical sources, so much so that historians have often treated the Bible, in Mark Noll’s words, as . . . . Continue Reading »
Esther is a book of the Bible that does not refer to God explicitly even once. On the surface, it is a story about political intrigue, sex, and violence. Yet the rabbis of the Talmud lavish praise on this work, asserting that there are two portions of Scripture that would never cease to be relevant . . . . Continue Reading »
When Pontius Pilate warns Jesus that he has authority over life and death, Jesus reminds him, “you would have no authority over me, unless it had been given from above” (John 19:10–11). At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus assures his disciples that “all authority has been given to me in . . . . Continue Reading »
For no particular reason except that it has been on my mind, this goes out to lectors everywhere who have been given the wrong instruction manual on proclaiming scripture in worship. I am here to correct any misconceptions you may have about the task. You may thank me later. But first, let me . . . . Continue Reading »
During the debate over “biblical inerrancy” that raged among evangelicalism for several years in the late 1970s, I remember someone observing that Harold Lindsell’s 1976 book, The Battle for the Bible, which pretty much got that debate going, was more a theory of institutional change than it . . . . Continue Reading »