Below is an early version of a diagram which I developed a few years back after first hearing the term “henotheism” in a theology course at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary and after some discussion of ecclesiology at that same institution. Who else but me is going to try to express in a simple diagram on […]
In discussions among Christians it is common to be asked to share one’s favorite Bible verse. I don’t have a favorite movie, song, vacation spot, color, city, grandchild, or Bible verse. Except in the case of my one and only and therefore favorite wife, I just don’t think in terms of favorites but rather in […]
I clearly remember being warned by one of my peers, about sixty years ago at age 9, that when I grew up and got married and my wife was having a baby that I should make sure she does NOT go to a Catholic hospital because they would let her die rather than allow any […]
Channel surfing while on the elliptical machine in the gym yesterday I ran across a panel discussion from David Axelrod’s University of Chicago Institute of Politics. One of the panelists was columnist David Brooks and he was saying that, in his opinion, what we have lost over the past fifty years or so is what […]
(Note: This is another in a series of postings of material used in a Confirmation class) Attempts to read through the Bible, beginning with the creation stories in Genesis and proceeding through the inspirational and perhaps comforting accounts of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, Joseph, and Moses often […]
After the death of King Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel divided and engaged in civil war, Northern Israel against Southern Judah. The warnings of Samuel about kingship were validated as both were led by a series of mostly bad kings. But the Bible story depicts the continuing “steadfast love” of God throughout their trials […]
Everybody who grew up going to Sunday School in a Christian church knows the stories of the boy Samuel being called by God three times but thinking the calls were from the priest Eli, of Saul being anointed by Samuel as the first king of Israel, of David slaying Goliath, and of Solomon solving a […]
There is that old Bible trivia question: Who in the Bible (besides Adam and Eve, of course) had no parents? Why, Joshua, the son of Nun, of course. Joshua took over from Moses and led the people in some degree of conquest of the Promised Land. Then Joshua died, and things got pretty messy with […]
Moses, his prophetess sister Miriam, his spokesman Aaron, and his successor Joshua are the dominant characters of the Old Testament books of Exodus through Joshua. Abraham had just gotten up and gone when God told him to do so, but Moses started a new tradition by explaining why God had made a bad choice and […]
Once Abraham shows up at the end of Genesis 11, the rest of the 50 chapters cover his life and the lives of the other patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people including his wife Sarah, their son Isaac and his wife Rebecca, and their troublesome twins, Jacob and Esau. Jacob, with minimal and non-exclusive […]