2015 was a strange year for the world. Historic court decisions in the US, riots and political uprisings throughout the world, Wars, terrorism, political civil wars, and terrible tragedies. It seems that the world as we know is crumbling around us. The new year didn’t bring anything that new, but simply a pause to our heated discussions over race, violence, politics, and our very way of life. And it seems that there is no hope...
Anathea E. Portier-Young. Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism. Eerdmans, 2014. 462 pgs. $35 (Paperback). ISBN 978-0-8028-7083-4. Anathea E. Portier-Young’s Apocalypse against Empire (originally release in 2011) comprises, to quote John Collins from the book’s foreword, “an important contribution to the study of Judea under Seleucid rule and to the social context of apocalyptic literature” (xiii). Winner of the 2013 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise, and now rereleased in a more...
Growing up my hometown was, and still is, very conservative. Most everyone identifies as a Christian and a Republican, and to me those two terms were nearly synonymous. I was taught that America was the greatest nation on the planet and that we were in fact a Christian nation, to suggest anything different would be tantamount to suggesting that bacon was not delicious, and only crazy people and liberals would suggest something like that. The...
Horsley, Richard and Tom Thatcher John, Jesus, and the Renewal of Israel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2013. 207 pages. Paperback. $20.00. In John, Jesus, and the Renewal of Israel, Thatcher and Horsley argue for a fresh reading of John’s Gospel. They contend that John presented Jesus as one whose ministry enacted Israel’s renewal in opposition to the Judean establishment and their Roman supporters. The larger goal of their work is to establish John as a valid source for Historical...
Brueggemann, Walter. Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2014. 165 pages. Softcover. Retail: $15.00. In Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks, Walter Brueggemann suggests that the ancient Israelite ideological crisis caused by the destruction of Jerusalem can act as an analogy for the modern American ideological crisis caused by 9/11 and that the prophetic response of ancient Israel should act as the pattern for the modern church’s response. This...
I just had the privilege of reading Aaron Koller’s new book on Esther which came out just a few weeks before mine (Esther and Her Elusive God). I would have liked to engage him in my book, but this brief review will have to suffice (for now). Aaron Koller, who is Associate Professor of Near Eastern and Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University in New York City, is the author of a new book on Esther, entitled, Esther in...
“Such is the natural and inevitable tendency of the best constituted governments. If Sparta and Rome have perished, what state can hope to endure for ever? If we wish to form a durable constitution, let us, then, not dream of making it eternal. In order to succeed we must not attempt the impossible, nor flatter ourselves that we are giving to the work of men a stability which human things do not admit. The Body politic,...
In my last post I went through the cultural developments that led to the basis of our modern understanding of authority detailing the historical shift in religious and political viewpoints. Eventually we have come to understand in the modern context a delegated authority that tends to come from the will of the majority of individuals rather than the historical notion of a top-down delegation. Historically the factions that have understood a more top-down delegation were...
Since the twentieth century, no topic has shaped the philosophical conversations more than the question of authority. It is not that the topic wasn’t brought up previously, certainly the Reformation and the Revolutions in America and France centered on the topic, but the fervor with which the debate raged in academic circles during the twentieth century (and 21st for that matter) is unique in the course of the Great Conversation. There are probably two reasons...
Let me begin with a bit of full disclosure. I’m black. My wife is white. And we’re going to have our first child this summer. This commercial obviously hits close to home. That being said, the following post about the Cheerios commercial is, surprisingly, not going to be about race or the ensuing “shitstorm” it’s causing online. If you haven’t already heard, the commercial shows a biracial child asking her white mother a question and...
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