Psalms write and express revelation, relationship, and response on and through the body; corporeal vocabulary, awareness of embodiment and somatic metaphors abound. This rhetoric draws people in through reference to common experience and uses somatic language to express thoughts and emotions which often escape conceptualisation, such as confusion,…[Read more]

Throughout Daniel 8–10, Daniel is touched five times by human-like figures. By these touch interventions, he receives both physical and emotional strength which allow him to continue participating in the revelatory experience. This essay argues that embodied participation marked by the sense of touch not only legitimates an authentic revelation b…[Read more]

Using cognitive metaphor theory to examine the four NT nursing metaphors (1 Thess 2:5–9; 1 Cor 3:1–3; Heb 5:11–14; 1 Pet 2:1–3), this article demonstrates that the same nursing frame can be used quite differently. The work of separating the contributions of each input space and then running the blend demonstrates how each metaphor functio…[Read more]

The verb ba’ash (lit. “to stink”) is used repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible to describe unwanted groups or individuals (Gen 34:30; Exod 5:21; 1 Sam 13:4; 1 Sam 27:12; 2 Sam 10:6; 1 Chr 19:6). However, there is an overwhelming tendency in English translations and commentaries to translate bet-aleph-shin in a figurative sense as “obnoxious” (NIV, NKJ…[Read more]

The discipline of embodied cognitive science and associated concept of intercorporeality provide the theoretical framework of our analysis of Proverbs 31:10–31. This essay fleshes out the underlying cognitive and meaning-making processes and entailments inherent in the valiant woman’s use of her hands and body as depicted in the poem. The val…[Read more]

When Jesus humbly washes his disciples’ feet (John 13), he engages his friends up close using the sense of touch. This article explores how his touch conveys a quality of love that no other physical sense can capture. Sensory Anthropology reveals how touch is often overlooked and undervalued but is quite potent. We confronted these dynamics most r…[Read more]

The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs contain nuanced discussions of the nature of sin, which is invariably associated with both demonic forces and the human body. The senses are portrayed as human spirits. These senses, when used inappropriately, can allow the spirits of deceit to overcome a person and lead them to sin. Seeing, tasting and…[Read more]

This essay explores the meaning of the word glōssa, the tongue, in Acts. The focus of my study will be Acts 2:1-13, the Pentecost narrative, where the reader first interacts with tongues of fire and with the experience of glossolalia, speaking in tongues. I read this passage exegetically (but playfully) while I consider the meaning and usage of…[Read more]

According to the promotion text on the jacket, Jehu Hanciles’ book provides “a magisterial sweep through 1500 years of Christian history.” The distin-guished church historian Philip Jenkins agrees, and, in his foreword, credits Hanciles with redrawing “the historical maps by which we understand the Christian story.” Jenkins just regrets that he d…[Read more]

In der Einleitung seines Werkes weist der Autor auf den zweiten Artikel der Glaubensüberzeugungen der Kirche der Siebenten-Tags-Adventisten aus dem Jahr 1980 hin: „Es ist ein Gott: Vater, Sohn und Heiliger Geist, eine Ein-heit von drei gleichermaßen ewigen Personen.“ Doch dieser Satz stehe bei manchen Adventisten so sehr in der Kritik, dass ganze…[Read more]

This is a very spiritual book. As a sequel to the author’s volume titled Longing for God: A Bible-Prayer Journal (Pacific Press, 2017), it continues its personal character and focus on practical piety. It is also a book with a personal back-ground. Hasel recounts numerous details of the tragic loss of his wife Ulrike, who died of cancer, and his s…[Read more]

What Richard Rice has essentially achieved in The Future of Open Theism is to appraise the prominent issues in the development of the open theism dis-course and to chart new paths for its future, especially since the publishing of The Openness of God twenty-eight years ago. Rice, a leading voice of the open theism theology, sums up its major…[Read more]

This article reassesses the metaphors found in Isa 49.26a and 63.6 in their historical and socio-religious context of alcohol production. Using interdisciplinary approaches from archaeology and anthropology, traditional interpretations that have emphasised a context of alcohol consumption and drunkenness, rather than wine production, are…[Read more]

This essay examines the Book of Revelation in dialogue with the films of Christopher Nolan, with particular attention to the use of nonlinear narrative. The approach taken to Nolan’s work is that of auteur theory, a pattern theory which traces the distinctive technical and artistic voice of the director across a wide range of films (e.g. M…[Read more]

This article concentrates on the affective impacts of the relationship between the bodies of the father and his daughter in Sirach. It relies on gender studies as well as affect theory to explore how intensities pass from body to body in the biblical text, and also to the bodies of those who read it. The father’s body is marked by gynophobic a…[Read more]

“The Bible” does not exist as material reality, and yet as a cultural icon “the Bible” animates institutions and enterprises devoted to it. This article assesses the short history of scholarship on one such institution, the controversial Museum of the Bible (MOTB) in Washington, D.C., in order to highlight and critique the fantasy of “the Bi…[Read more]

This book of 398 pages is a collection of papers presented at the Third International Symposium of the Institute of Adventist Studies at Friedensau Adventist University, held on April 23‒26, 2018. The book, published in 2020, gives a rich tour d’horizon of Adventist life on the European continent. In the global Adventist village, there might be…[Read more]

Right from the outset, it has to be said, that Divine Attributes is a follow up volume to Peckham’s The Doctrine of God, published last year, which was pitched at the level of an introductory textbook for the study of the doctrine of God. His current volume takes the discussion further into constructive space and as such moves his overall p…[Read more]