Babel

https://bluemonkeyreview.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/babel/

Tricksters

The opening chapters of Genesis show an activist God. Creation. Punishment. The destruction of the flood. And then, at the end of chapter 11, almost everything changes. In the earlier chapters we inhabit cosmic time, and everything affects the entire world and all of humanity. But, at the end of chapter 11 we read about the family of Terah, moving with its flocks from the region of Ur into the west, to Canaan.

https://bluemonkeyreview.wordpress.com/2025/03/06/tricksters/

The great exchange

Language is powerful in Genesis. Already in v. 3 of chapter 1 God speaks and the acts of creation begin, bringing order from the tohu wa bohu of the primal waters. Their use of language continues, either in creation or in making remarks to other, associate Gods. They do not engage in conversation. We have only the words of God until the story of the second creation of man, in chapter 2.

https://bluemonkeyreview.wordpress.com/2024/12/05/the-great-exchange/

God

We all tell stories, all the time and in many varieties. We love stories so much that we consume them constantly, whether in novels or movies or the airy persiflage of politicians. Each story we find becomes part of our library. Some stories overlap with the ones that we have about ourselves, and some become guides for our lives. The stories we tell serve the purpose that William James assigned to philosophy, becoming an agenda and guide both for how we understand…

https://bluemonkeyreview.wordpress.com/2024/10/07/god/

Studying the Bible

Almost a year ago the pastor of the church I’d just begun attending announced that he would begin an adult Bible study after church on Sundays. So, I thought, “Sure, why not? Let’s see how this goes.” But at the very same time I thought, “How do I do this?” Because there is no way that someone with my childhood spent dodging shards of brimstone and hearing about “Jee-zus” and praying for the salvation of the majority of humanity damned to hell and…

https://bluemonkeyreview.wordpress.com/2024/07/28/studying-the-bible/

The Trials of Madame Restell

Syrett, Nicholas L. The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime. New York: The New Press, 2023. In The Trials of Madame Restell Nicholas Syrett offers both historians and general readers their best chance to make the acquaintance of one of the most famous (and infamous) women of 19th century America.

https://bluemonkeyreview.wordpress.com/2024/07/04/the-trials-of-madame-restell/

My review of Kurt Pehler’s new book, A Religious History of the American G.I. in World War II

https://bluemonkeyreview.wordpress.com/

Ministering to men in battle

Piehler, G. Kurt. A Religious History of the American GI in World War II. Studies in War, Society, and the Military. Lincoln (Neb.): University of Nebraska Press, 2021. In A Religious History of The American GI in World War II G. Kurt Piehler offers a tour of the ways that the U.S. provided for the religious needs of men and women mobilized for war.

https://bluemonkeyreview.wordpress.com/2024/04/03/ministering-to-men-in-battle/