Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans' Apostle (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 63-64. Paul's letters are instances of Greco-Roman rhetoric. The conventions of ancient epistolary style and the rhetorical tropes that Paul employs to persuade his hearers need to be taken into account when we try to interpret his letters. Of these, we must... Continue Reading →
"That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons."Mark 1:32 Sickness. Disease. Death. In the ancient world, particularly in Palestine of the first century CE, all of this could be associated directly or indirectly to the activity of demons, evil spirits that could afflict human beings by external... Continue Reading →
Wayne T. Pitard, "Before Israel: Syria-Palestine in the Bronze Age," in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, Michael D. Coogan, editor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 53. It is no exaggeration to say that the Ugaritic tablets have revolutionized the study of the Bible. Until their discovery, we had almost no direct information about... Continue Reading →
It seems like social media these days is little more than memes, and if you’re getting your Bible from memes, well, you should expect problems. Here is a recent one that appeared on Twitter. I first came across this meme after it had been shared by a few atheists. Its aim is perfectly simple: to... Continue Reading →
Part 1: Series Introduction and Contradiction #1 - "How Many Women?"Part 2: Contradiction #2 - "Was the Stone Already Removed?" (forthcoming)Part 3: Contradiction #3 - "Angel or Angels?" (forthcoming)Part 4: Contradiction #4 - "The Ending of Mark" and Series Conclusion (forthcoming) SERIES INTRODUCTION It is no understatement to declare that historic Christianity lives and dies... Continue Reading →
It's tempting to read the Bible as an aloof, metaphysical text untethered from a historical reality. But the various writings that make up the Bible were written by very real people in very specific historical circumstances. While it is true that in many instances we have no idea who wrote these texts and, in a... Continue Reading →
David R. Law, The Historical-Critical Method: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2012), 43. Johann Salomo Semler (1725-1791) was a pupil of [Siegmund Jakob] Baumgarten and took the next logical step by dropping Baumgarten's notion of the supernatural understanding of Scripture and arguing for a biblical interpretation free of doctrinal presuppositions. It was with... Continue Reading →
If you’ve spent any amount of time online perusing Christian apologetics websites, you’ve no doubt come across the Nazareth Inscription, an edict from Caesar found on a slab of marble that prohibits grave robbing under penalty of death.[1] It is called the “Nazareth Inscription” because it was sent to antiquities collector Wilhelm Froehner from Nazareth in 1878.... Continue Reading →
Wayne T. Pitard, "Before Israel: Syria-Palestine in the Bronze Age," in The Oxford History of the Biblical World, Michael D. Coogan, editor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 27. There are many reasons to be skeptical of [the Patriarchal] narratives as historically accurate accounts of the lives of Israel's progenitors. Indications within the narratives suggest that... Continue Reading →
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