A Pilgrim's Search
A Fresh Look at the Bible and Its History
List of Latest Posts
- An Exegetical Approach to John 1:1-3
- Doing Archaeology
- The True Gospel
- A Human Messiah: The Case for a Spirit-Filled Jesus as the Christian Exemplar
- Becoming a Heretic
- How Jesus Became God
- Navigating the New Testament: Tools, Debates, and the Path Toward Scholarly Competence
- Decoding Paul and YHVH
- The Shema and the Commandment to Love God in Its Ancient Contexts
- Making Scrolls into The Bible
- How Judaism Was Subverted
- The Strange Case of the Mishna
- When Was The Book of Deuteronomy Written?
- The Bible’s Crucial Lesson
- Why Was Jesus Murdered?
- Jesus’s Nature
- Always Learning, Never Knowing
- Moses in Egypt?
- Israel in Egypt?
- The Development of Israel’s Idea of Righteousness
- Was Luke’s Gospel First?
- Correction!
- The Singular God and the Divine Christ: A Case for Modalism
- Jesus in Light of Paul in Light of Jesus
- Refuting Paul’s Attackers
- Life in a Moral Cesspool
- Forgiven, or Transformed to Righteousness?
- The Fraudulence of “Biblical Historians”
- Learning the Real Paul (and Unlearning What You’ve Been Taught)
- Unpacking the New Covenant Gospel
- What Does “He Emptied Himself” Mean?
- The Letters of James and Paul — Different?
- Thinking About Jesus and the Crucifixion
- Paul’s Real Gospel
- Whatever Happened to Yom Kippur?
- Jesus’ Fulfillments
- Why Priests and Sacrifices?
- How Old is the Hebrew Bible?
- The Priestly Slander of Moses
- Searching for the Bible’s Sources
- The Origins of Judaism
- New Heavens and New Earth
- Why Jesus?
- Does Paul’s Potter/Clay Metaphor Say What Christians Think It Says?
- Did Jesus Say He Was YHWH?
- What Did the “Law of Moses” Mean To…?
- Searching For (and Finding) the “Needle in the Biblical Haystack”: Following the Bible’s “Blue Thread”
- Jesus and the Moses Scroll
- Moses’ Real Words?
- Ruminate on God’s Word
- How Jesus Taught
- God’s Issues With the Temple Cult
- Which Way to Horeb?
- What, Or Who, Are the Bible’s Heavenly Beings?
- Fishers of Men
- What Is God Waiting For?
- Groaning With the Spirit
- The New America
- Israel’s Claim to the Land
- The Kingdom of God
- New Testament Uses of Old Testament Texts
- The “Fulfillment” of Scripture
- Listen, Learn, Keep, Do
- Understanding the Language of “Day of the Lord”
- Jesus and Paul
- Uncleanness, Sin, and Holiness in the Hebrew Bible
- Where Did YHWH “Come From”?
- Some Narrative Patterns in the Hebrew Bible
- The Lesson of Ecclesiastes
- Make Man In Our Image
- Who Wrote the Hebrew Bible?
- A Reassessment of the Source(s) and Authenticity of the Hebrew Bible
- Developing Spiritual Fitness
- Interpreting the New Covenant
- Wrestling With the Origins of the Pentateuch
- Did God Want a Temple, Sacrifices, or a Monarchy?
- In the “Bronze Age”, Where Did the Bronze Come From?
- John’s Identification of Jesus
- Implementing God’s Kingdom on Earth
- Freedom, in Paul
- The Parable of the Shrewd Manager
- The Bible Explained
- A Critical Analysis of Eastern Orthodox Beliefs
- The Problem With Murder
- What is the Christian’s Calling?
- Searching for a Consistent Biblical God
- Biblical Narrative As a Mosaic
- Christ’s Cultural Revolution
- The “X-Files” of the Tanakh
- New Life in the Kingdom of God
- Paul’s Apocalypse of Christ
- Abandoning the Love of Jesus
- Creating a New Nation
- “Angels” of the LORD
- A Call to a Radical Christian Revolution
- Death by Selfie: Egotism as the Root of Our Troubles
- Why Was Jesus A Human
- What Paul Meant by “all Israel”
- The Inversion of Virtue
- Did God Deceive Israel?
Latest Posts
Latest Posts
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An Exegetical Approach to John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. (2) This one was in the beginning with God. (3) All things were made through him1, and without him was not anything made that was made. Does it say Jesus? No. Should we infer it does? No, unless…
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Doing Archaeology
Most of us have a very pollyannish impression from popular media of what practical archaeology consists of. Most of what the media presents is photos of smiling workers holding up finds, workers “working” in the excavation, carefully dusting off a small area with brushes (!). If you’ve ever done archaeology as a volunteer grunt, as…
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The True Gospel
The Christian Gospel (εὐαγγέλιον – euaggelion) is not what you’ve likely been taught. Yes, it is about Jesus of Nazareth’s life, death, and resurrection. And it is most assuredly the result of God’s gracious mercy. But what it produced, and more importantly why, has been absent from the modern Christian church’s pulpits for most of…
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A Human Messiah: The Case for a Spirit-Filled Jesus as the Christian Exemplar
The earliest Christian proclamation presents Jesus not as a metaphysical anomaly but as a human being perfectly empowered by God’s Spirit and exalted after his resurrection. This paper argues that the most historically plausible and biblically grounded Christology begins with Jesus’ humanity, continues through his Spirit anointing at baptism, and culminates in his exaltation as…
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Becoming a Heretic
There are moments in a long season of study when the ground shifts beneath you. Mine came unexpectedly, after seventeen years of study of biblical literature, theology, and the history of Christian doctrine. I realized, with a mixture of surprise and clarity, that I had become a heretic.
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How Jesus Became God
Here’s a fact that may startle you: not once in our earliest surviving records of Jesus does Jesus call himself god. The world’s leading scholars on Jesus—including those who fully believe in conservative Christianity—agree this was not something he said or thought about himself.1
