Articles

In-depth articles exploring biblical themes, historical connections, and scriptural insights.

Literary Tools

More Than Modern: The Ancient Roots of Hebrew Letter Traditions
Did the tradition of finding meaning in the Hebrew letters begin with medieval Kabbalah? The primary sources tell a different story — one that stretches back to the biblical period itself.
Understanding Your Old Testament: How Four Traditions Organize the Same Scriptures
The Jewish Tanakh, the Protestant Old Testament, the Catholic Bible, and the Latter-day Saint canon — same ancient texts, different arrangements, different stories. A guide to what you're holding when you open the scriptures.
Reading Job as a Poem: How the Hebrew's Shape Preaches the Message
Almost all of Job's forty-two chapters are Hebrew poetry, whose shape does the teaching. A plain-language look at how repetition, the two-beat line, and a single repeated verb — 'know' — carry the book toward 'I know that my Redeemer liveth.' A gentle on-ramp to Hebrew poetry before the Psalms.
How Hebrew Poems Are Built: Reading the Architecture of the Psalms
Hebrew poetry rhymes ideas, not sounds. A plain-language guide to the forms of biblical poetry — parallelism, chiasm, inclusio, staircase, call-and-response — with an interactive tool that maps them in the Psalms of this week's reading.
The Thirteen Rules — How Ancient Rabbis Read Scripture (and Why It Matters for Latter-day Saints)
Rabbi Ishmael's thirteen hermeneutical principles — the rules Jesus used, Paul built his theology with, and Book of Mormon prophets employed without naming them.
Related: Week 25