What did ex-pagans and Jews expect when they became followers of Jesus? This is the question that Alex Finkelson addresses in his recent post "What kind of blessings did the churches inherit from Israel?" As Finkelson discusses, the various promises made to the patriarchs and even to king David are tangible: a literal kingdom in... Continue Reading →
Acknowledgment: I stole the title for this post (i.e. "SJ's Biblical Blunders") from @CounterApologia in a conversation he and I had on Thomason's piece. It was too good not to use! INTRODUCTION I’ve been busy with a major project that will hopefully be out either by the end of this year or the beginning of... Continue Reading →
Note: This will be the final Weekly Roundup of 2019. Claude Mariottini recently posted a piece explaining why the common Christian interpretation of Melchizedek as a Christophany doesn't add up and serves to undermine the claims made in the book of Hebrews that Jesus was a priest "according to the order of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 7:11).... Continue Reading →
I am finally getting caught up with episodes of the New Testament Review, enjoying episode 23 on Richard Bauckham's work on the hypothesis of Gospel communities and episode 24 on Judith Perkins' The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era. This is great work by the intrepid team of Laura Robinson,... Continue Reading →
"This is the only life that we know we get: use it in the best way you know how. Don't wait around for a bonus life that may never come." -@Paulogia0 @Paulogia0 published a video entitled "Why I am Not a Christian" over at his YouTube channel. It isn't intended to be an exhaustive explanation... Continue Reading →
It's back! The Weekly Roundup has returned from its hiatus since earlier this summer. Since I was responsible for the August 2019 Biblical Studies Carnival, I suspended work on the Roundup to prepare for that. But that has been submitted and so I'll resume the Roundup! Enjoy! New Testament scholar Michael Kok (The Gospel on... Continue Reading →
"We do not need a scholar to help us know whether the New Testament is a reliable narrative that we can trust. I believe that we can know this ourselves if we simply read the text and study it as it is, without commentary from anyone else."- Robert Clifton Robinson Readers of my blog know... Continue Reading →
"For atheists, I would say your life is not meaningless even if you no longer believe you are for something like a hammer is for hammering nails- or even if you believe the universe is absurd! Just because you are not an instrument of someone else’s will, it does not follow that you cannot live... Continue Reading →
"One would certainly not expect any literary reference to Christians or Christianity or Jesus himself in Roman authors of the first century. Christianity was simply a tiny (TINY) religious movement that no one had heard of. Most Romans would not even have heard the name Christian until probably the middle or end of the second... Continue Reading →
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