Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Job, textures on June 27, 2008| 1 Comment »
The symmetrical certainties of Job’s companions sound merely insipid in the light of the man’s unexplainable pain. Job recognizes the tattered, commonplace worthlessness of their regurgitated wisdom:
Who does not know such things as these?
It seems that Job does not so much question the validity of received wisdom as he does its absolute utility. Such convention explains many things, Job, might allow. But it does not interpret these boils. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Job, textures on June 26, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Job’s bitter audacity in challenging God’s ways is perhaps matched only by his ironic familiarity with biblical traditions that place the deity in a more favorable light.
Scholars debate the degree to which the author of the book of Job is interacting with actual biblical texts. Regardless, he knows intimately the traditions that have nourished those texts and deploys his verbal expertise to stand them on their head. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Job, textures on June 26, 2008| Leave a Comment »
It is facile, conventional, and mostly true to consider the Bible a life-affirming book. Like any simple description of complex reality, it is also reductionistic. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Esther, textures on June 22, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Some find the violent pedigree of the Purim celebration distasteful. In a day that has seen too many religious massacres, it hardly seems right to gather with family and friends on the anniversary of an ancient one, when according to the book of Esther the Jews of the Persian diaspora brought vengeance down on those who had planned to destroy them.
To this reader, such moral sensitivity seems too finely tuned. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Esther, textures on June 21, 2008| Leave a Comment »
In the face of Esther’s passivity when informed of her people’s peril, her uncle Mordechai has strong words. Considerable heat might well have surged as he dictated his response to his courtly adoptive niece:
Then Esther spoke to Hathach and gave him a message for Mordecai, saying, ‘All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law—all alike are to be put to death. Only if the king holds out the golden scepter to someone, may that person live. I myself have not been called to come in to the king for thirty days.’ When they told Mordecai what Esther had said, Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, ‘Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.’ Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, ‘Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.’
At the risk of caricature, the book of Esther is in particular ways representative of the history of the Jewish people. Disproportionate achievement, access to the halls of influence, and acute peril comingle in this people as a constant that is persistent against the turn of generations and the shifting of circumstance. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged Acts, biblical reflection, textures on June 20, 2008| Leave a Comment »
It is difficult to impede the forward motion of men and women who find their honor in being dishonored for their cause. This is as true of people whose lives have been enobled by an admirable vocation as it is of those perhaps more obvious cases where the most pernicious of campaigns are carried forward by pathetic addicts to the sensation of other people’s hatred. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Ezra, textures on June 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »
No rigid insistence on independence gathers the entirety of the biblical witness under its stern gaze. The Jews have at times known how to thrive as imperial subjects. A similar tolerance for political dependence characterizes the New Testament documents. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Ezra, textures on June 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »
It seems nothing can be done in the Persian-administered province of Beyond-the-River without the signature of a far-off king. Letters go back and forth in the project of securing Persian support for this or that version of a future for what had been Judah before Nebuchadnezzer’s tolerance for its nonconformist people ebbed. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Ezra, textures on June 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Disappointment frequently dogs the story of the Jewish Commonwealth that was founded by the returnees from Babylonian captivity. The exilic prophets—at least those whose legacy found its way into the canonical vision of a people reborn against the strong currents of history—were better at cultivating expectation than at managing it. So the same narrative that crystallizes the unlikely rebirth of a Jewish people that should have faded into the historical mist under the strong hand of their Babylonian captors ends up hoping for more than Return produces. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Chronicles, textures on June 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Few kings are as highly regarded by Israel’s historians and chroniclers as Hezekiah. His rule falls upon Judah like a long, sunny day when storms have been and others are forecast.
Not only does this monarch preside over an unprecedented surge of generosity towards the temple and its officials. He also pushes forward a systematic religious reformation and experiences a remarkable liberation from the previously unvanquished Assyrian armies. In each case, the man occupies the Chronicler’s pages like a latter-day David without the vices. (more…)
Canter Bridge 