The Theologian's Table

At the height of their idolatry, the Israelites worshiped a Canaanite deity named Asherah (Hosea 4:12-13). This deity was depicted sometimes as a nude woman and sometimes as a tree. When I learned of this I was struck by the connection between Asherah's depictions and the Creation story in Genesis. Eve after all, did spend most of her time in the garden of Eden naked and then helped to usher sin into the world by eating the fruit of a tree. While I could admittedly be reading too much into the text, I believe that Asherah could be a perversion of the first biblical woman. Jealous of God's creations, the serpent in the garden sought to twist everything God had done, but his perversion with humanity only started there and continued through history. It is troubling that the serpent perverted a woman into a false deity to replace God. It is troubling that humanity was tricked into eating something that brought separation from God. And it is troubling that humanity brought sin and...

     When my son was around 3 years old one of his favorite movies was Lady and the Tramp 2. In this movie, the son of the the title dogs was a rambunctious little guy and he would get into all sorts of trouble. At one point in the film the puppy exclaimed, "Are there are is rules, rules, rules" and then he ran away from home. Funnily enough my son parroted the line at me when he got in trouble one day, needless to say I didn't let him watch the movie as much after that. The Situation in Leviticus Imagine yourself among a massive expanse of people, so massive that the ruler of the foreign land you just left feared your people's number so much that he had all of the youngest offspring killed. Now your nation is traveling the desert towards a land that was promised to you by God. The logistics of this whole exodus are mind-numbingly incomprehensible to you and people are getting sick, people are getting tired, people are getting lawless. To top it off, you...

Jesus, the Perfect Human As I mentioned in my previous entries, each gospel has a unique perspective on the mission of Christ. Luke's target audience were the Greeks and his portrayal of Jesus was to show that he was the perfect human, someone we should all aspire to be like. The reason for this was because the Greeks of Luke's day spent a lot of time debating on what the perfect human should be like, so through out the text Luke gives examples of why Jesus is this ultimate person. Luke the Physician Luke was a doctor and a historian and this is reflected in his style of writing. He was very concerned with not only depicting accurately the ministry of Jesus, but also Jesus' past. He tells of how an angel came to John the Baptist's mother(John is Jesus' cousin) and told her that her child would prepare the way for the Messiah and tells what happened between that event and his birth. He next covers the events of what lead up to Jesus' birth, but instead ...