Dr Paul Allen

As Genesis 31 opens, Jacob has been living in a foreign and hostile land for twenty years, outside the land that he was promised by God. He was driven out of this land in Genesis 28 after he had stolen the blessing meant for Esau, his elder brother. He fled to Paddan-Aram, where his uncle Laban lived. There he stayed and worked for Laban and married his daughters, Leah and Rachel. Yet throughout these years, Laban took advantage of Jacob and dealt with him dishonourably. Here in Genesis 31 Jacob finally decides to leave Laban after the Lord instructs him to return home to the promised land (Gen. 31:3). So Jacob and his family leave, in obedience to the Lord, taking with them all the livestock and property that he received as payment for all the years he worked for Laban, as Genesis 30 explains. But in Genesis 31:19 there is a seemingly throwaway line that reads, “And Rachel stole her father’s household gods.” Looking closer, this line is indeed a shocking revelation. Rachel, the God-fe...

What is a deity? Now, that’s a good question. But it’s not one with a simple answer. In fact, there are several answers that we can give. POLYTHEISTIC DEITIES If your educational background is anything like mine, then at some point in your schooling you learned the basics of Greek mythology. The colorful stories of Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Poseidon, and the other gods worshiped in ancient Greece were some of my favorite things to read about.  And while the Greeks eventually learned that no divine beings lived on Mount Olympus, the stories of the Greek gods became a core element of Western culture. This continues today, with movies, television shows, and even comic books retelling, adapting, and using these stories in various ways. Though the Greek gods themselves are fictional, they fall under one of the definitions of the term deity. As Merriam-Webster tells us, one meaning of the word deity is “a god or goddess,” that is, a being who is worshiped—or in the case of the Greek gods, w...