The biblical book of Daniel delights in narrating the temporary collapse of the Babylonian king who held the Judaean exiles in captivity. Simultaneously, its author asks the reader to learn from the royal demise. If this kind of thing can happen to a pagan king, we are urged to consider, it can happen to anyone. [...]
Archive for the ‘textures’ Category
the capacity to bring down: Daniel 4
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Daniel, textures on April 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
wise and wiser (II): Daniel
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Daniel, texture on April 6, 2012 | 3 Comments »
The best way to become wiser is to be wise in the first place. Wisdom is a progressive ordering of one’s life. It is cumulative. The more one learns, the more one can learn. In the context of that blending of wisdom and apocalyptic traditions that occurs in the book of Daniel, a key criterion for Daniel’s [...]
wise and wiser (I): Daniel
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Daniel, textures on April 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
It is not as though Daniel and his friends in the biblical book that bears his name lack credentials. The book’s introductory narrative places them among the cream of the Israelite exiles. Then (the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar) commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family [...]
heroism came later: Daniel 1
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Daniel, textures on April 3, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Daniel stands out in a superficial reading of the book that bears his name as a Golden Boy, a larger-than-life Man of Principle who was destined before time to stare down the powers and prove the superiority of Israel’s God in a pagan environment. No reading undercuts the true nature of the text more easily [...]
terra firma: Proverbs 12
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs, textures on April 2, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
The land is solid and unimaginative. Meetings of farmers—men and women who work the land seldom sentimentalize it—are not hotbeds of speculation. Men and women of the soil are sensible folk with down-to-earth concerns and an eye on the bottom line. You don’t debate the land. The land is what it is, a given. Whoever works his [...]
Legion: Luke 8
Posted in textures, tagged biblical interpretation, Luke, textures on March 29, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
It is difficult, absent the strong smells and hideous noises that cling to chaos and its victims, to read off the page the full horror of the scene: When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. For a long time he had worn no clothes, [...]
by the skin of our teeth: Psalm 68
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on March 26, 2012 | 3 Comments »
It is almost impossible, at death’s door, to imagine life. Death always boasts its inevitability. Stripped of its loud theatrics, death is not half as fearsome. But it prefers that secret not get out.
and Jesus gave him to his mother: Luke 7
Posted in textures, tagged biblical interpretation, Luke, textures on March 26, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Jesus’ attention is so often drawn to women with no way out of their predicament. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the [...]
everything they said was good: Deuteronomy 5
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Deuteronomy, textures on March 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
When the book of Deuteronomy places the terrified Hebrew slaves before Mount Horeb, they are doubly afraid. The nascent people of Israel fear not only the traditionally lethal prospect of seeing YHWH. They also express mortal fear of hearing him. The people’s terror of sensory contact with YHWH leads to their counter-proposal that Moses serve [...]
terrifying: Exodus 14
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Exodus, textures on February 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
With something like the explanatory potency of Genesis’ account of human origins, the story of the Hebrew slaves fleeing their ‘house of servitude’ in the book of Exodus strikes the hearer with stunning immediacy. We recognize our own terror in theirs, hemmed in by the sea ahead, besieged by the tromping of Egyptian boots, driven [...]
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