A Pilgrim's Search
A Fresh Look at the Bible and Its History
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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
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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 of the Roman Empire. Yet most readers approach it with none of that context, no awareness of the scholarly debates that define its interpretation, and no tools beyond a study Bible and a favorite commentary series. This article maps the pedagogical pathway that takes a…
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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 tradition, obscures what Paul is actually proclaiming. Paul’s gospel is not forensic; it is transformative. It is the announcement that God has begun the work he promised in the Torah and the Prophets — the work of giving Israel and Judah new hearts, writing his…
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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.
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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. This is not the general assumption subscribed to by biblical scholars, and has not been for hundreds of years. Their stock-in-trade is the study of biblical and extra-biblical texts to try to understand what material influenced the writing, where it might have been written, and…
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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 northern tribes of the House of Israel. And before that? We simply don’t know. Because of sparse archaeological data, scholars dispute the historicity of David and Solomon, the conquest of Canaan, the Exodus, Moses’s upbringing in Pharaoh’s court, and the patriarchal sagas stretching back…
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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 likely notice that this time period includes the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 AD, a sixty-year inter-war period of unrest, followed by the last Jewish-Roman war from 132-136 AD.
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An old Jewish joke says that for every two Jews, you have three opinions, but that could also apply to biblical scholars. Because no two biblical scholars can agree on anything, and they oftentimes disagree with themselves, eagerly hedging their own theories, proposing counter-options. It is true that academics quarrel over theories for a living, but biblical scholarship takes it to a whole other level and is notorious for the complete lack of agreement on even the most basic views on the Bible. Who wrote what and when? For every two biblical scholars, you’ll get three opinions But there’s one…
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Our purpose here is to expose what the Bible teaches is God’s desire and intentions of, and for us, and as a result, how the rest of one’s traditional religious beliefs and practices are supplanted. Having understood God’s heart for us, we will see which aspects of the Bible reveal it, and which don’t. Those that don’t, we need to recognize are there for different, and by definition, secondary, reasons. The Bible’s story of God’s plan and message isn’t “new”. It is simply non-traditional, and so largely ignored.
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Theories about how Jesus’ death dealt with our separation from God have come and gone throughout church history. The favored, traditional Christian doctrine is that Jesus was sacrificed on the cross to “forgive our sins”. This is believed to be crucial since those sins were holding us apart from God’s “justification” and, it is believed, our resultant ticket to God’s heaven when we die. More cynical observers say that this is simply the “Get out of Hell free” version of Jesus’s death. Just as there are sound, biblically founded reasons to accept this theory, there are equally valid reasons to…
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Christian tradition has long affirmed that Jesus is divine—one “person” of a triune Godhead. This framework interprets His authority, miracles, and exaltation as evidence of inherent deity. Yet the New Testament also presents Jesus as a fully human figure who lived, acted, and suffered within the constraints of human biology. A second model has garnered some support and that is the idea that God manifested Himself as the human Jesus, so-called Modalism[i]. In this model, God presents an image that is indistinguishable from a biological human, and expresses God’s character and power. A coherent alternative to divinity arises when we…
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Most people who embark on a journey expect to arrive at their destination. Airports contain huge boards showing the status, gate number, and destination of all of its departing airplanes. All of the people boarding a flight for a particular destination fully expect to arrive at that destination. But this situation isn’t true of every pursuit. Our premise here is that there are those embarked on the abstract journey of “knowing” that don’t always want to succeed. They don’t want to “arrive”.
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The Bible’s Exodus narrative is quite specific about Moses’s history in Egypt: his adoption by the Queen; His rise to responsibility and power under Pharaoh; his crime, and his flight to Midian to escape justice. And from Moses’s introduction in this narrative, the Exodus author goes out of his way to inform us that Moses is from the tribe of Levi. We’ll look for Moses in the historical record, we’ll also try to understand the significance of his Levite identity. And, we’ll propose his place in the historical record of Egypt.
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Where is the evidence for Israel in Egypt and their Exodus from it? When we look for its memory in Egypt we don’t find it. When we look for it at Jericho we don’t find it. When we look for it in Egyptian or Mesopotamian records we don’t find it. You would think something as momentous as an entire nation emigrating from one land to another would get some mention in the historical (not just the Biblical) record. But we don’t see it, explicitly. Did it not happen (at least as recorded in the Bible)? Or, did it happen, but…
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“Righteousness” to Israel came to mean being acceptable to God. Most know that the Ten Commandments given by God to Israel at Sinai served as the foundation for Israel’s idea of righteousness. The evolution of Israel’s received understanding of their position vis-à-vis the status of “righteous” before God was dependent on their progressive revelation by God of His will for therm. And, they had to fight through many false declarations intent on obscuring the truth to benefit men. While the Decalogue remained the bedrock of Israel’s moral imperative, their view did not remain static but developed through their history. Our…
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For Bible Nerds: The “Synoptic Problem” is not a “problem” but a question: “How is it that we have three Gospels relating many of the same stories and sayings of Jesus in sometimes near-identical words?” Did they copy from each other? Did they copy from some common source we no longer have? And of these Gospels, which was written first? Luke?
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As you may have noticed in the past on this blog, the foot/endnote system didn’t work. If you’re one of those who read a piece and want to track to an in-line footnote to see what it says, and then smoothly click on its index to return to where you were, WordPress’s system generally (not always) flunked that challenge. However, having spent some time on the phone with their support people I at least figured out how to manually correct these links: reference-to-note-back to-reference. So, I have invested many hours to clean up these note references in all of my…
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Only some people believe that Jesus of Nazareth was divine, the same thing as God. Almost none of those believe that God is a singularity. They would say that He is “three in One”. Does the assertion of Jesus’s divinity by itself create a dichotomy between these two ideas, as many claim? The purpose of this piece is to demonstrate that a single Divinity does not represent a dichotomy but rather a transcendent truth that goes by the label “Modalism”. We will look at some of the voluminous textual evidence that supports this case and find that, far from being…
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There has been a long-running tradition in scholarship of complaining that Paul tried to establish his own religion apart from the teachings of Jesus. I claim this is a position of ignorance, and perhaps academic agenda, not because Jesus’ and Paul’s words aren’t different – they are. But, rather, because they simply haven’t understood how the two messages interoperate within the context of the larger plan of God. In this larger context, of God’s redemption of Israel and the world to Himself, their messages were a duality, with one integrally supporting the other.
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The Apostle Paul has gotten a bad rap for centuries, mostly based on his antagonists’ misunderstanding/ignorance. Our purpose here is to review the attacker’s charges in some detail and demonstrate why they’re mistaken. In so doing, we’ll look at his criticisms in antiquity from both Jewish-Christian and Gentile-only factions of the early church, as well as from contemporary critics who contend Paul’s messages are counter to Jesus’.
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The US today is infected by a cancerous malignancy that has nearly completely destroyed the healthy portions of its host. The difference between a cultural malignancy and a biological one is that the cultural form has an attitude. It rejoices in its destruction. It celebrates the death of the healthy, unlike the biological which is simply a death-creation machine. Where did this disease start? In the classroom. A century ago, the education establishment was infiltrated by Marxists. Decade after decade, their influence in that establishment grew to the point that today, the majority of teachers in public education are if…
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For centuries, the traditional, Christian interpretation of Jesus’ death has been that it was an atonement for the sins of those who would choose to “believe” and follow Him. This scenario portrayed a kind of cosmic cleansing for those who believed, though no one told us what that meant. A common assumption is that having one’s sins atoned for/forgiven is having them excused. For the record, not everyone completely bought the cosmic cleansing story, citing texts (e.g. Luke) that didn’t completely embrace the sacrificial atonement theme.
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Just a quick note. Over the past many years in reading the work of “Biblical Historians” I have been struck by what, perhaps, should have been self-evident to me from the beginning. These “scholars” are not trying to understand why, for example, Jesus’ disciples all chose (with the exception of John who was exiled to an island to live out his life) to be martyred rather than renounce their faith — at least according to the accepted tradition.
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Scholars and expositors have been mangling Paul’s message in his epistles (particularly Romans) for centuries. If we are to see Paul’s true message, we’re going to have to dig much more deeply into the text, and then unlearn nearly everything we thought we knew. No small undertaking. But in so doing, we will also see revealed the true Gospel message of not only the entire New Testament, but the Hebrew Bible as well, as one grand story. And once you’ve seen this story accurately, it is doctrine- and theology-upending to the point that you will never again read your Bible…
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Many Western Christians [i] and secular individuals have misunderstood the core message of the Bible’s Good News for centuries. This analysis aims to clarify the true Gospel, obscured since the Reformation, by examining relevant New Testament and Hebrew Bible passages to determine whether they support or challenge what I’m referring to as the “New Covenant Gospel”, first proposed by Dr. Jason A Staples. This interpretation diverges from the traditional Gospel message fundamentally.
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Recently a very long-standing dear friend of mine asked my thoughts on Paul’s phrase “he emptied himself” in Phl 2:7. He said he had been considering the meaning of the phrase for some time. I confessed I hadn’t thought about it. But, as it turns out, many hundreds of bible scholars and theologians have ever since the formation of the very early church. Let’s see what we can find out.
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A popular opinion today amongst scholars of the early Church, and Bible students, that James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul the Apostle proclaimed two different gospels – that the book of James contains an authentic look into 1st century Jewish Christianity and what his brother, Jesus, taught, while Paul’s epistles lay out a completely different “religion”. Some of these also believe that, since Paul wrote first, that aspects of his letters were borrowed by the Gospel writers, thus propagating the Paul version of Christianity throughout nearly the entire New Testament. Is this viewpoint correct?
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For nearly as long as there have been people, they have been sacrificing animals to their gods. It has been a doctrine of Christianity from its formative days that Jesus was crucified as a sacrifice on behalf of all people. Is this doctrine correct? Or does it simply represent an adaptation of Jesus’ story to fit this ancient and powerful socio-cultural model? And, can we know?
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When you hear a respected biblical scholar reinforcing with conviction what you’ve been learning – and teaching – for the last ten or twenty years, it’s a big deal, not to mention quite the affirmation. Such was my case in coming across a lecture by Dr. Jason Staples (one of my favorite New Testament scholars) in 2024 entitled “Salvation by Moral Transformation: What Paul Really Meant by Grace”. Not to be too dramatic but Staples’ insights into Paul’s real message will be at least as explosive within the traditionalist community as was “The New Perspective on Paul”[i] of Messrs. NT…
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I spend virtually zero time reading the Talmud. However, I recently stumbled onto a video presentation that describes some radically strange stuff there having to do with the Yom Kippur ceremony, especially after 30 AD. Especially for Christians, this is a must-know piece of Jewish legend.
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In this piece, we’ll drill down into the claims of believers that Jesus, as the Christ – the Messiah, was the fulfillment not only of the Hebrew Bible’s Messianic prophecies, but further that He was the fulfillment of its “Law” and “the Prophets”, and, perhaps most controversially, of Israel itself, as well as inaugurating the New Covenant prophecies it proclaims.
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I have written several pieces explaining the fact that God, as He is recorded in the Hebrew Bible, did not want His people to perform sacrifices to Him. Yet the vast majority of the Pentateuch is all about sacrifices and offerings. Why?
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How old are the books of the Hebrew Bible, and why should we care? Since the Bible is likely the most influential book ever written, we deserve to know the truth of its composition and history.
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The Hebrew Bible presents conflicting political viewpoints between its authors. The priestly viewpoint seeks to distance itself (and its readers) from the mythic legacy of Moses as the redeemer of the nation of Israel and replace it with a system of abject reverence for, and obeisance to, the Aaronic priesthood. We’ll examine a few examples of how this conflict is played out in the text.
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Many laymen dispute that the Pentateuch was written by several distinct authors. Biblical scholars don’t. But they disagree on who those authors were and what they wrote. If we stipulate that the authors of the Documentary Hypothesis wrote the Pentateuch, what can we discover about their backgrounds and worldviews? Let’s see.
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When did “Judaism” begin to be widely practiced (i.e. widespread adherence to what we today recognize as the rules and calendar of the Pentateuch)? Irrespective of when the individual books of the Pentateuch were written, when did the majority of Judeans begin to live them out? The answer is quite shocking.
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What is the proper interpretation of the Bible’s passages describing the Eschaton — the end and resolution of the world? Most, for the last 1200 years or so, have believed that when they die, they will go to “heaven”, despite the paucity of biblical evidence for this view. But what happens at the end of all things? Surely it is a point in time beyond which all of God’s plans for His Creation are realized.
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God promised Israel a savior, a Messiah of the line of David. Having rejected God and suffered for centuries they expectantly looked forward to their ultimate vindication and redemption that he would bring.
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In Romans 9:18-23, Paul gives us a very sparse but dense (contextually) metaphor describing God as a potter working on “vessels” that in one case turn out “for blessing” and in others, turn out “for destruction”. Is Paul saying what traditionally has been believed he is saying? Let’s see.
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In a recent video interview, Dr. Jason Staples presented the outlines of his argument that lexically, Jesus referred to Himself as YHWH in both Luke and Matthew. Now, if you’re comfortable with the whole “son of God” characterization, this may be a bit jarring
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This post presents a three-part series looking at what the term “Law of Moses” (and similar) meant to different people at different times in the Bible; 1) The Israelites, at various points in their history, 2) Jesus (in His many interactions with others involving His understanding of its meaning), and 3) Paul, who infamously dismissed “works of the law” as valid for justification of his Jewish brethren.
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Our premise in what follows is that there is a unified message permeating throughout the entire Bible: both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. That message represents God’s “signal” concerning how we are to treat Him (love and reverence), and each other (love, as we love ourselves). But His signal must penetrate through lots of modern distractions and Biblical texts that have little, if anything, to do with living in accordance with God’s will and with one another in love. Thus, they are “noise” obscuring His signal.
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Our purpose here is to compare and contrast the “Ten Words” (Decalogue) found in the “Moses Scroll” (MS) with both of the other canonical versions found in Exodus and Deuteronomy, but also with the teachings of Jesus. We’ll see if the nuances in the MS Ten Words (and their blessings and curses) can also be detected in Jesus’ teachings. And if they can, can we propose how such a linkage could exist when at the same time it is missing or much harder to find between our published versions of the Decalogue? Let’s see.
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In the 1880’s an antiquities dealer in Jerusalem came into possession of an apparently ancient “scroll” consisting of fifteen strips of leather containing paleo-Hebrew texts. Within a period of five years of their “publication”, the fragments had been declared forgeries by “experts” in Europe, and shortly thereafter, the antiquities dealer, Moses Shapira, committed suicide in a Rotterdam hotel room in 1884. But what if they were authentic? That’s the question I want to pose and try to answer.
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Recently Steve Gregg visited my area and presented a message to a Christian fellowship here. His subject was the change that we are expected to undergo having committed ourselves to Christ. But it was a metaphor he used in his message that I thought was stunning in its clarity, and worth sharing with those both familiar, and not yet familiar, with Steve’s teachings.
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When we read Jesus teaching in the New Testament, we know instinctively that He is speaking and teaching differently than we do today in the modern West. How is it different? What influenced His teaching “style” that we have become so familiar with over the years, but remains so distinctively “foreign” to our modern, Western ears. That’s what we’ll dig into and explain.
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A casual reading of the Pentateuch leaves one with the impression that, for some unexplained reason, God created a line of priests to mediate between him and hs rescued Hebrews and laid out in meticulous detail an intricate and fully developed sacrificial system, tabernacle, and culture. A more careful reading, however, at the very least calls into question the God-ordained pedigree of these details and practices. Scholars, theologians, Rabbis and regular Bible readers have noted these issues for centuries[i],[ii]. And we know that we have biblical textual scholars telling us that most of the Pentateuch was authored between the 8th…
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The Exodus itinerary is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. We don’t know where virtually any of its stopping points were. At best we know something about what was there, and, rarely, how long they traveled to get there. And, of course, there’s the inertia of the traditional explanation (i.e. via Sinai’s St. Catherine’s) and its advocates more or less dominating the discussion (and generating quite emotional reactions to any proposed alternative). Truth in advertising: I don’t subscribe to the most popular theories that have Israel crossing the Gulf of Aqaba either at Nuweiba or at its…
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One of the more obscure concepts in the Bible for me has been the idea of Heavenly beings. I say it is obscure because when they are mentioned in texts they remain quite enigmatic, and opinions among biblical scholars and theologians concerning the nature of these beings vary all over the map. In diving into this subject we have to keep in mind that the question is: “What was in the mind of the biblical authors when they referred to a ‘divine council’, or ‘sons of God’, or ‘hosts of heaven’”, NOT what the reality is (something I contend we…
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There is an intriguing connection, as pointed out by my friend and Hebrew Bible teacher, Ross K. Nichols, between some of the Hebrew Bible’s prophecies, describing a regathering set off by phrases placing that regathering in the “latter”/”last”/”days to come”, and Jesus’ statement that He would make His Disciples (the fishermen Simon (Peter) and his brother Andrew while they were in the process of fishing) “fishers of men” (Mt. 4:19). Question: Was Jesus simply using the obvious metaphor that those Disciples were vocationally already fishermen to connect the mission He was inviting them to take up? Or is there some…
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About 2000 years ago, Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, prophesied by Zechariah (9:9) of Israel’s long-awaited Messiah, and hailed by His followers with “Hosanna[i]”. In keeping with God’s plan for His Creation, Jesus was murdered, buried, and then arose from death only to reappear to the Disciples and many who knew Him. During His ministry, He repeatedly taught about the immanence of God’s Kingdom on Earth (i.e. “at hand”, “in your midst”, etc.) The Bible says that for His act of sacrificial obedience, Christ was given all authority in Heaven and on Earth. Yet, here we sit, 2000…
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Rom 8:26 “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” A recent post on social media mentioned an interview with NT Wright (A Deep-Dive into the Book of Romans: Dr. N.T. Wright – Theology in the Raw) in which he makes a point regarding the above (and other Romans’) passages of Paul that for me was both startling and eye-opening. Let’s look at Wright’s narrative of the Romans story, and unpack his startling point.
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The New America could care less what their country is or represents. They’re only concerned with themselves. The New America is the product of failed public education, failed parenting, failed social policies, open borders, and not just resistance to achievement but disdain for any, ANY differentiation of one vs another on the basis of an individual’s achievement. This is the state of the union today.
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Given the current situation in Israel, not to mention the context of the disputes over the past 80 years, I think it is worthwhile to evaluate what the Bible has to say about Israel’s claims to their land today. The Bible is overflowing with hundreds of instances of God promising the land of Israel (“Canaan”) to the Israelites, both post-Egypt and post-Assyrian and Babylonian exiles. Certainly, it is a popular opinion today that modern Israel – the nation established by the UN in 1948 – has some form of biblically mandated franchise on these promises of the land known as…
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Who believes they have a sound, well-supported understanding of what Jesus was talking about when He taught on the Kingdom of God/the Heavens? I thought I did. And I almost did. But one of its key characteristics – when it started – I have been completely mistaken about.
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How much do you know about the nature of references made by New Testament authors to Old Testament scripture? It turns out that there is an entire academic field centered on the study of this subject. And, there seems to be at least two conflicting views among scholars of these New Testament (NT) citations of Old Testament (OT) texts.
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Luke 4:[17] And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, [18] “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, [19] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” [20] And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes…
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What were God’s instructions to His children? Moses thought they were crystal clear. They were the basis of God’s covenant with Israel. Where do we find these covenant teachings today? In significant part, they have been abandoned. Let’s take a look at what, according to Moses, the basic precepts of being “God’s people” involved[i], and why it was that Israel, as surrogates for all humanity, failed miserably at it.
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The prophecies that use the oft-repeated term “day of the Lord” in describing a pending judgment by God resulting, typically, in some cataclysm, are referred to as Day of the Lord (DOL) prophecies. Most of the occurrences within the Bible of the use of this phrase appear in the writings of the Minor Prophets: the so-called “Book of the Twelve”[i]. It’s not uncommon for a DOL prophet to mix separate prophecies having to do with two or more imminent, future, or far-future prophecies[ii]. When all these prophecies use elements of the same apocalyptic language to describe their events, it becomes…
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Dozens of books and hundreds of scholarly papers have been written on the subject of the differences in the ministry messages of Paul and Jesus. Some gloss over the differences in their attempt to maintain a united Christian front. But others use the differences to claim that Paul, not Jesus, is the real founder of Christianity and its “through grace by faith” message and that this Christianity is unfaithful to Jesus’ authentic version. The purpose of this note is not to reconcile these differences but rather to pay attention to the historical context into which they were each proclaimed. In…
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Most modern Christians (and essentially all unbelievers) misunderstand the key patterns used by the Hebrew Bible to convey the concepts related to Holiness. They tend to see a moral binary pattern that can be summarized as: “Holiness is the absence of Sin”. But that’s not the pattern that the ancient authors of the Torah were guided by. Certainly, there is a relationship between sin and holiness. But it’s just not the one we moderns think of. Let’s see what it is.
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Most of us are familiar with the Biblical story of YHWH introducing himself to Moses, as Moses was shepherding a flock, as a vision/theophany in a burning bush adjacent to Mt. Sinai/Horeb (Ex 3:1-2, 15). (For the uninitiated, your English Bible’s use of the word “LORD” [all caps] is its symbol for God’s name, YHWH.) There is a long tradition of Israel’s recognition of their God first occurring in the deserts south of Israel, in Midian through this episode. Midian was an area of today’s NW Arabia, home also to a people known as the Kenites. We’ll look at that…
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One of the dominant features of the Hebrew Bible is its use of purely literary or literal-historical patterns – whether of actions, of the circumstances of characters, or similarities in narrative construction. Interestingly, some of the Bible’s patterns may just be literary devices for their own sake. This article identifies dozens of such forms. But the narrative patterns we’re interested in are those that serve through their repetition/reprise to underscore the importance of the pattern to the story of God and His people. Here we’ll dig into some examples of those that fall into this latter category. What we hope…
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Those somewhat familiar with the book of Ecclesiastes know that its headline message is encapsulated in its second verse, Ec 1:2: [2] Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. The book’s Hebrew title is Qoheleth whose meaning roughly is “an expounder of wisdom”, the narrator of the book.
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What does “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1:26) mean about us? And, what does it mean that God gives man “dominion” over the living things in His Creation? And, what on earth does this have to do with prohibiting them from worshipping idols? Let’s find out.
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Is it possible to figure out how the Hebrew Bible was written, by whom, and when? Those who study the text for a living would say “yes”. Among them is Richard Elliot Friedman, in his 1987 book “Who Wrote the Bible?” (updated in 2019). In it, Friedman makes an absolutely fascinating and substantially believable case for the origins and authorship of the Hebrew Bible. In this note, we’ll try to outline his major findings and summarize some of the textual data and analytical reasoning he uses to come to his conclusions. And, as we have done previously, we will ask…
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All scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17). There is a festering dissonance today between the traditional view of the Bible by people of faith (both Jew and Christian), and the data uncovered within its text by those scholars known as Text- or Source-critics – people who study only the text to learn its dating, and authorship/sources. But, (and this will be my key point) I have concluded that the text-critical data concerning when or by…
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Most of us think about our spiritual lives (when we think of them at all) as cerebral, passive things: things that just are, likely supported by some “quiet time”, perhaps some Bible reading, and prayer. However, our spiritual strength is only truly developed when, like a muscle in our body, it is stressed, and stressed repeatedly.
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There is substantial controversy surrounding the proper interpretation of the announcement of a New Covenant between God and Israel and Judah (Je 31:31-34, Ezk 36:24-28). Both the Jewish and Christian interpreters spin its interpretation to suit their theological views, leaving no consensus. Let’s see if by working through the texts we can discover the truth.
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Modern Biblical scholarship has concluded that the majority of what we now have in the Biblical Pentateuch was substantially written in the seventh to fifth centuries BC. This creates a formidable problem for the traditionalist view (of both Jews and Christians) that holds that these foundational works were written by Moses, in Moses’ timeframe. But should it?
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People casually familiar with the Hebrew Bible and its narrative of the history of Israel generally accept that the cultural symbols and practices that developed in that history were prescribed – even commanded – by their God Yahweh (YHWH). A little study, however, reveals a much more ambiguous situation.
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Undoubtedly, this little monograph will be met with yawns of disinterest from most. I started thinking about the question of how the wandering Hebrews could come up with enough bronze to fashion the altar God commanded them to make while researching another Exodus topic. Since an entire epoch of some 2.100 years was named for the metal, which happened to encompass the beginnings of civilization and the first monotheistic religion, I decided to at least ask the question.
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The book of John is the fourth of four Gospels of Jesus Christ and is unique among those in its portrayal of the story. John doesn’t so much focus on narrating a history of what Jesus did, as is common in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but on proclaiming who Jesus was, and what His life, death, and resurrection meant. In this note, we’ll briefly look at how John saw Jesus in relation to God, typically identified as “God the Father” in our English translations.
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The Kingdom of God is the precinct in which its citizens interact with each other and outsiders per God’s will. So, as Christians, how does God want us to act both to model and to implement His Kingdom “on earth as it is in Heaven”? Implementing the Kingdom of God “on earth, as it is in Heaven” is more than an enterprise of personal transformation. It is also an enterprise of transforming the society in which we live to reflect its values. Here we intend to analyze how Christians caring for others and desiring to transmit God’s blessing to as…
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Countless words have been spilled analyzing and debating Paul’s intended meaning of the phrase “works of the Law”, and his theological treatment of the Law itself. In contrast, far fewer words have been spilled analyzing and exploring Paul’s concept of the “freedom” he ascribes to those “in Christ”. Our intention here is to show the relationship between these two concepts and, in so doing, dispel some pervasive misunderstandings, at least among evangelicals.
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One of the most obscure parables Jesus related to His Disciples is found in Luke 16:1-13. The average Bible reader is left scratching his head as to what on earth Jesus is doing in this parable in which He lauds what seems to be deceitful behavior by the discredited manager of his rich master’s accounts. But once the reader sees the intended lesson, he is convicted by its message. Let’s see if we can’t unpack that message here.
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Do you know how the stories of the Bible fit neatly together into an integrated whole — the story of God’s interactions with His created humanity? If not, this may help.
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In way of introduction, I have been forming my Christian beliefs, in some cases based on other’s views, in others personal study, for now some 20+ years. Recently, I have explored some of the beliefs and doctrines of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and, surprisingly perhaps, have found substantial overlap with my own. I say surprisingly, because I have never experienced any teaching of the Orthodox Church, a Church who claims its beliefs to be the authentic beliefs of the very earliest Christians. I would characterize my own beliefs as still shackled in some ways to traditional Western Christian doctrines (e.g.,…
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We all have an instinctive revulsion of the wanton destruction of one of us by the hand of another. But why? If the victim is not one of our family or close relations, how is it that we feel the evil of his loss? How are we – the victim and I – connected? Where does our sense of the fact that his taking is evil come from? This piece is an exploration of a recent “revelation” I’ve been considering that points to a much more profound loss than the loss of just this one person.
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There are three polar opposite popular opinions these days as to what it is the Christian is called to do. The first is that the Christian calling is to do essentially nothing. This is the view held, in whole or in part, by the vast majority of those who identify with the Reformed Church tradition, convicted as they are by the doctrine of God’s Grace. These folks’ understanding is that God is in complete control of the outcome of society, and so they are at best incidental to His Sovereign decision. Some who hold this opinion share it only up…
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I wonder how many people have been thrown off of their inevitable search for God by what they perceive as not just the inconsistency of the characterization of God in the Bible, but by His seemingly severe, some would say immoral, characterization in the Old Testament. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could find and describe one, integrated, consistent whole of the Divine Nature across the entire Bible? Imagine being able to perceive God’s essential God-ness through a new lens, and so enable others to see beyond their personal prejudices. Looking for such a God is the task of this…
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Most of us read the Bible as at most a narrative of the history of God’s people, culminated by some revolutionary stuff in the New Testament. And, it certainly, on one level, is that. But few of us read the Bible carefully enough or deeply enough to see its deeper construction as an intricate weaving of individual, but connected, narratives that all create a larger meta-narrative.
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Most people including self-professed Christians have no inkling of the enormity of the transformation of their everyday existence Christ prescribed. His prescriptions so thoroughly upended the culture of first-century Jews that they concluded He had to be eliminated.
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There is some very strange stuff going on, semantically, in the Tanakh – the Old Testament. Our English translations hide much of it, allowing us to blithely assume that unclear verses are either just poorly translated or, perhaps, intended to be purposefully obscure. But, what if their obscurity/ambiguity reveals some much deeper meaning than simply the literal texts in which they appear? And, if there is a deeper meaning, what could it be, and what is it likely to be?
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In the second three chapters of Ephesians, Paul casts his revolutionized view of human life and interrelationships that, as much as any portion of his epistles, brings into sharp focus the life transformation that followers of Christ should both expect and strive for.
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In his letter to the Ephesian church, the Apostle Paul reveals that for millennia God had knowledge kept secret that suddenly, through Christ, had been revealed, first to Christ’s Apostles, and then to those to whom they preached. The revelation of this secret, this μυστήριον mustḗrion, was for Paul the life- and reality-shattering apocalypse of Christ.
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Modernity has gradually abandoned the love of Jesus as the key tenet of society with predictably disastrous effects. Ever since the Enlightenment (1650-1900) mankind has committed itself to a mission of analyzing technical and societal problems and, through its own IQ, skills, and determination (you know, “hard work”, etc.), “fixing” them.
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The stark differences between ideological factions in the United States are, to me, intractable. As factions, they will never again lock arms, sing Kumbaya, and collectively do what’s in the best interest of the nation as a whole, irrespective of what they, individually, may need to give up to achieve that end. Why is this?
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The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) has many stories in which beings typically identified as “an angel of the LORD ”, or just “angel”, are depicted interacting with people as, apparently, another person. What can we learn about these persons from the texts? More than you might think.
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The premise of this note is that in order to rescue this civilization, Christ Himself is going to have to “appear” in the world to demonstrate to its inhabitants that He is the way, the truth, and the life. And, since we Christians are the members of His body on earth, that job falls to us.
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In an article at The Daily Wire, Joseph Curl reports that a 23-year-old Chinese crane operator, Xiao Qiumei, who had 100,000 followers on social media, fell 160 feet to her death while filming herself on a giant crane. She was the second woman to die in China in July by way of a fall while recording herself on camera.
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The West, I argue, has turned a corner from which it will be impossible, short of a miracle, to un-turn. We’ve become addicts of narcissism, ignorant judgements, and feigned righteousness. We’re continuously fed their messages of “just a little more” so that our impending overdose is all but assured. But, perhaps most depressing is the fact that we don’t even realize it.
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People who read the Bible somewhat seriously are well aware of the Biblical story leading up to the nation of Israel; their near-total rejection of their redeeming God; His attempts to retrieve them from their apostasy; and their ultimate destruction as a nation and collection of tribes in 70 and 135 AD. What some may fail to notice is that even before they entered the “promised land”, God had foretold their apostasy and that, as a result, they would endure the curses articulated in His covenant made with them at Horeb.
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Most will recognize this title as one of the most famous admonitions of Jesus of Nazareth. But most of us don’t have much experience in fulfilling it. How can we turn this around?
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The book of Isaiah is in many ways a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. In it, we find a seemingly bipolar God concerning His chosen but about-to-be-exiled Israel. One moment He chastises their behavior while the next He promises future redemption and blessing. And in it, we find the enigma of His servant – sometimes His beloved Israel, and sometimes…well, someone else, unnamed.
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Anyone who has spent any time in Israel knows that it is a land of hills, and therefore of constant elevation change from one location to another. From the cliffs overlooking the Rift Valley of the Dead Sea and Masada in the South, to Qumran, to the Central Highlands, to the Golan Heights and Mount Herman in the far north. (If you’ve been there you may have heard the saying: “Everything is uphill in Jerusalem”.) How did this topography influence the Biblical authors?
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Our democratic institutions evolved out of those invented by the Greeks. The Greeks were intoxicated by the idea of rational speech – logos. Their principle was that logos was at the heart of the Greek-invention and revered culture of political discourse. And “discourse” only occurred when those involved shared in the same virtues and all sought after the same common good, setting aside their personal interests. To the Greeks, their edification came from striving together to achieve a common good for their citizens. To them, politics was the process of seeking the highest possible good for the people. Nothing could…
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Calvinism defames and assaults the character of God. Here’s how.
