Currently two competing models exist side-by-side to explain the “antinomian” or “free grace” controversy, in which Anne Hutchinson and her theology are said to have played a key role. The differences in these narratives appear to require a return to the sources and a careful examination of Hutchinson's own statements—as far as they can be reconstructed—in the context of her first interrogation by a group of clergymen in the autumn of 1636. Since one of the narratives casts doubt on John Winthrop's assertions of her manifest unorthodoxy at that time, a central question will be whether the views she expressed then deviated significantly from the mainstream of theology espoused by godly contemporaries in Britain and if so, in what particulars. Hutchinson's remarks at the outset of the controversy could then serve as a baseline in an investigation of how the dispute escalated and evolved over the following months.

In an anonymous Jewish anti-Christian polemical tractate from the thirteenth century we find the Hebrew formulation of what seems to be a common sneer by Christians at their Jewish neighbors: “Why do you not seek the aid of the great the way we do? (for they seek the aid of their saints).”1 The assumption behind this question is that medieval Jews indeed refrained from visiting the shrines of Christian saints and from beseeching them to heal the sick or mediate between the human and divine realms. In this paper I wish to question this assumption and suggest the possibility that some Jews did approach the shrines of the saints and seek their assistance, especially in healing physical disabilities. Given the strong appeal of the cults of healing saints in medieval European societies, it seems likely that Jews not only were well aware of this practice and displayed a measure of curiosity toward it, but possibly participated in the rituals as well.2

Modern medicine owes many of its founding principles to a spiritual heritage. However, passage through the Enlightenment and entry into a secular, pluralistic health context have yielded an estranged relationship between care of the body and care of the soul.1 Scientific medicine now holds the primary role in care of the body while religious communities are solely responsible for care of the soul. The needs of both body and soul are in many respects served well by this specialization and division of labor, but ultimately, of course, human experience is not susceptible to such a simplistic dichotomization. The lack of integration of spiritual and material care of the human person in contemporary life has led to increasingly evident tensions, most notably in the mechanization and isolation of the experiences of illness and dying.2

In reflecting upon the fact that religious language survives long after the practices and the devotion that gave rise to it have departed, Alasdair MacIntyre once observed that what “we” are left with is “a religious language which survives even though we do not know what to say in it.”1 Some writers and thinkers who acknowledge that religious language is, for them, effectively either foreign or dead, continue to employ it because of its beauty, or because they wish to speak to people for whom such language is still living for political, moral, or literary reasons. But why a writer for whom religious language holds no personal meaning would go to near absurd lengths to construct a narrative saturated with biblical typology (and even numerology) is difficult to imagine. The question of how such a writer would seem to know almost exactly what to say in the religious language of a tradition that she never practiced is even more difficult to understand. How could someone who couldn't say that she was among those for whom religious language was a source of binding claims to truth (as opposed to a culturally important animated corpse) speak as if things were otherwise?

Material reminiscent of an Aegean-style culture, distinct from that of the indigenous population in southern Canaan, appeared some time near the beginning of the twelfth century B.C.E. Scholars have long associated this material with the arrival of a group of newcomers called the Philistines and known as the famous antagonists of the biblical Israelites. Limited excavation and publication of Philistine settlements have restricted previous studies to the available portable artifacts such as pottery. While such studies have advanced our understanding of Philistine culture, le mobilier is vulnerable to post-depositional disturbances and other issues that potentially remove them from the proper context of those people who created and used them. Unlike such portable elements of material culture, archaeological strata and built architectural features cannot be traded; thus they reflect the activity of people at the site. The current research has shifted the emphasis away from that of previous Philistine studies, from an examination of portable items, to the examination of fixed domestic structures, which thereby helps to augment our understanding of the composition and culture of the people living in the territories of Philistia.

Sin appears to be enjoying a recent surge of popularity, and not just among the religious. From Oxford University Press's popular series on the seven deadly sins to Alan Jacobs's Original Sin: A Cultural History,2 these books address a contemporary ambivalence about the traditional religious language of sin, even as they make a case for the continuing relevance of historical conceptions of sin. To this body of literature, Gary Anderson's Sin: A History is a distinguished addition. Like the books mentioned above, it is written to be accessible to a lay audience. Unlike them, however, it is much more explicitly theological and built on a much deeper scholarly foundation. While Anderson's title is provocative, it is possibly misleading. The issue of sin is protean, and much of the recent literature has focused on the moral psychology of sin. That is not Anderson's area of concern. Rather, his focus is specifically on the operations and implications of a key metaphor for describing the relationship that sin creates between a person and God. The metaphor in question is that of sin as debt. The history that Anderson traces is the emergence and development of this metaphor both in Jewish and in Christian theology and religious practice.

To sin or transgress, according to one dictionary definition, is to go beyond a limit, to cross what is supposed to be a clear border. In this sense, one can say that Gary Anderson has succeeded in writing a very sinful book. Like Sennacherib as the rabbis describe him, Anderson is (he “erases boundaries between nations”)—only I use this phrase to describe Anderson in rather a more positive sense than the rabbis intended it when they applied it to the Assyrian emperor.2 Throughout this book we are discussing, Anderson crosses boundaries between academic disciplines: biblical criticisms that study the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, Qumranic scholarship, rabbinics, patristics, the study of both medieval Catholic and early Protestant theology. He crosses boundaries within some of these fields, as well: for example, by attending to modern Israeli biblical scholarship in a way that is, alas, all too rare among non-Jewish scholars in North America and Europe; or by showing scholars of rabbinics what they can learn from the study of the New Testament, especially when that study is conscious of its roots in medieval and early modern theology. Most importantly, Anderson tears down artificial barriers that separate historical, philological, descriptive scholarship on the one side from constructive theology and inter-religious dialogue on the other.