Category Archives: Bible

Leviticus 19:18 “Love your neighbour as yourself”

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Baroness Thatcher was a ‘devout Christian’, according to Dr Eliza Filby, author of God and Mrs Thatcher.  She regularly attended the parish church at Chequers, regarded the life of Jesus as exemplary, and drew on the Bible to support her political values.

I will not call into question the sincerity of Baroness Thatcher’s faith.  But I will, however, comment on one rather glaring (mis)understanding of the teaching of Scripture.

As reported in Christianity magazine (June 2013), Filby says says that in the early 1980s the text “Love thy neighbour” was often appealed to in support of the welfare state. …

The Gospels and eyewitness testimony – the use of names

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What follows is based on this lecture by Dr Peter J. Williams.

Recent studies into the use of Jewish names inside and outside the canonical Gospels have provided remarkable evidence that these accounts were based on eyewitness testimony.

Tradition and modern scholarship agree that most or all of the Gospels/Acts were written outside Palestine. So how familiar were they with the agriculture, architecture, botany, culture, economics, geography, language, law, personal names, politics, religion, social stratification, topography, and weather of the land they are talking about?…

The historical reliability of the Gospels

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Of course, for some kinds of literature, historical reliability is irrelevant.  Who cares about the factuality of a fairy story, a piece of science fiction, or even an anecdote about some famous person?  But when we read other kinds of material, including newspaper reports, biographies, and works of history, we have a right to ask, “Did this really happen?”

We certainly ought to ask this question of the four Gospels.  For the Christian faith is not, in the first instance, a call to a certain way of life. …

The Kingdom of God in Matthew’s Gospel

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Matthew’s Gospel contains rich teaching on the kingdom of God, with thirty-two sayings peculiar to himself.

Mt 3:2 – John preaches repentance in view of the nearness of the kingdom of heaven.

Mt 4:17 – from the time of John’s arrest onwards, the same message is found on the lips of Jesus.

In Mt 4:23; 9:35 this message is linked with Jesus’ ministry of healing.  In Mt 10:5-8 Jesus commissions the Twelve with the same message and ministry.…

Contradictory texts, bizarre miracles, man-made myths?

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A recent discussion on Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable show promised more than it delivered.

The topic – or, at least, the starting-point for debate – was the often-heard retort of atheists to Christians, “I just believe in one god less than you.”  The argument, such as it is, is that once we have moved from polytheism to monotheism it is but a short further step to deny the existence of that one remaining god.  The argument is fatuous, of course. …

One language, two religions

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It was J. Gresham Machen, in Christianity and Liberalism, who commented that thorough-going theological liberalism is actually a different religion from orthodox Christianity.  It is, in fact, a different kind of religion.

This observation was borne out in a recent discussion on Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable? show between Ben Witherington III and Stephen Thornton.  Ben is an evangelical biblical scholar, Stephen a retired URC minister of liberal persuasion.

The topic under consideration was the narratives of Jesus’ birth as recorded in Matthew and Luke. …

Demons, ghosts, and Jesus

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For those who accept the metaphysical reality of daimons (I’m using a straight transliteration of the Greek, in order to place at a bit of distance the baggage that tends to accompany the word ‘demons’) the conventional idea is that they belong to an order of created, malevolent, non-corporeal beings.

The popular conception a ghost is that it is the spirit of a dead human being.

Peter Bolt has provided solid documentary evidence to show that for many people living at the time of Jesus, ‘daimon’ would have been virtually synonymous with ‘ghost’.…

Instone-Brewer: the destruction of the Canaanites

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The Bible records several acts of hostility that would be probably regarded as ‘war crimes’ today. The problem is made worse by the fact that God is said to have commanded these acts.  Perhaps the most notorious involved the command to utterly destroy the Canaanites (see Deut 20:16).

What follows is based on an article by David Instone-Brewer:-

Curiously, it may be that this particular act of genocide never happened. Although Palestine contains many remains of ancient towns destroyed by warfare, very few date from the time of Israel’s conquest.…

Miracles yesterday and today

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Many Christians must have wondered: If so many miracles are recorded in the pages of the New Testament, why are few (if any) witnessed today?  For sceptics, the answer is that the New Testament accounts of miracles cannot be believed.  For some believers, the answer is that although the New Testament accounts can be believed, the gift of miracles ceased when the canon of Scripture was completed.

New Testament scholar Craig Keener has recently published a work that bids fair to blow both the sceptical and the ultra-conservative views right out of the water. …

Taking it to extremes

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My eye was caught by a review, in the latest (Summer 2012) number of The Reader, of a recent book by Marcus J. Borg.

Marcus Borg is well-known as a radical New Testament scholar.  He is a member of the notorious Jesus Seminar and is deeply sceptical about the historicity of the biblical record of Jesus of Nazareth.

What particularly struck me in Derek Wood’s review of Speaking Christian were the following words:-

Borg sees a twin-track Christianity, travelled by those who see the Bible as a literal and inerrant source of truth, and those who follow what he calls the historical metaphorical approach, understanding the culture from which the Bible books were written and looking for the meaning behind the text.

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