A Pilgrim's Search

A Fresh Look at the Bible and Its History

Simple List of Latest Posts

Latest Articles

  • Navigating the New Testament: Tools, Debates, and the Path Toward Scholarly Competence

    This paper, authored by Dale Moreau, originally appeared on the Substack “Theological Voice” page. The New Testament is not a simple book. It is a historically embedded, literarily complex, theologically dense collection of documents written by first-century Jews and Jewish Christians whose world was shaped by Second Temple Judaism, the Septuagint, and the social realities…

  • Decoding Paul and YHVH

    When we look at Paul’s enigmatic gospel of salvation, we typically see a legal transaction, an idea originated by Anselm in the Middle Ages. Should we see a courtroom in which God, the judge, finds a clever way to acquit the guilty by punishing an innocent substitute? That entire framework, so deeply embedded in Protestant…

  • The Shema and the Commandment to Love God in Its Ancient Contexts

    This is one of the most insightful essays I’ve read in a long time. This is a message that both Judaism and Christianity seem to have lost sight of.

  • Making Scrolls into The Bible

    Most laypeople hold the traditionalist view that the Pentateuch – the Torah – was written by Moses sometime after Israel’s Mt. Sinai event. Further, they accept implicitly that Isaiah wrote Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jeremiah, and so forth. Key to these assumptions is that the authors were recording real-time events in Israel’s history, with no ulterior motives.…

  • How Judaism Was Subverted

    Modern Judaism dates to the middle-ages.  Before that came the Rabbinic Period, beginning in the first century.  Before that was the period described as the “Late Second Temple” Period which included the Persian, Seleucid, Hasmonean and Roman occupation periods.  Before that were the Babylonian exile and post-exilic periods, and before that the Assyrian obliteration of…

  • The Strange Case of the Mishna

    The Jewish Mishna is an enigma.  Not its texts, per se.  They are quite “practical” and plain as instructions on how to live the Jewish life. What is profoundly mysterious is the mentality of its authors in developing it between the 2nd half of the first century and the end of the second.  You will…