Category Archives: Bible

Who wrote the Fourth Gospel?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

It is known as ‘The Gospel According to John’, and the ‘John’ in question is traditionally considered to have been the apostle, one of the Twelve.

But doubts have been raised about this, even by such relatively conservative scholars as Richard Bauckham.

An argument in favour of the traditional authorship was developed by B.F. Westcott.  William Hendriksen (New Testament Commentary) presents his own version of that argument:

According to the information furnished by the Gospel itself the author was:

(1) A Jew

a.…

How can we pray Psalm 137?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Psa 137:7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
They said, “Tear it down, tear it down,
right to its very foundation!”
137:8 O daughter Babylon, soon to be devastated!
How blessed will be the one who repays you
for what you dished out to us!
137:9 How blessed will be the one who grabs your babies
and smashes them on a rock!

These sentiments seem far removed from the ethics of Christ’s kingdom. …

Conquest and Exodus

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Andrew Wilson discusses Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God by Matthew Lynch:

“Joshua portrays the conquest as a continuation of Israel’s liberation from Egypt’s power,” writes Matthew Lynch in his very helpful new book, Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God. “Moreover, the focus of Israel’s destructive energies was directed against the four symbols of imperial power present in Canaan.”

Warlords: Joshua consistently emphasises the defeat of the Egyptian-backed warlord kings, as the summary report in Joshua 12 makes abundantly clear. 

…

1 Tim 6:11; 2 Tim 3:18 – ‘Man of God’

Walking With Giants Posted on by

1 Tim 6:9 Those who long to be rich, however, stumble into temptation and a trap and many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evils. Some people in reaching for it have strayed from the faith and stabbed themselves with many pains.
6:11 But you, as a person dedicated to God [lit. ‘O man of God’], keep away from all that.…

What colour was Jesus’ robe?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

All four Gospels record that, during the trial of Jesus, he was mockingly dressed in a robe:

Mt 27:27 Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the governor’s residence and gathered the whole cohort around him. 27:28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe (χλαμύδα κοκκίνην) around him, 27:29 and after braiding a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand, and kneeling down before him, they mocked him: “Hail, king of the Jews!”…

Teraphim

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Stephen L. Cook notes that the word ‘teraphim’ occurs 15 times in the Hebrew scriptures.

The usual translation – ‘household gods’ – is, he suggests, somewhat misleading.

Cook thinks that they were effigies of deceased ancestors that were believed to live on in a different form, watching over a person’s household, Exod 21:6; 1 Sam 28:13; Isa 8:19.

In Gen 31:30 Laban searches for his stolen teraphim, calling them his elohim (a term that can apply to supernatural beings other than major deities, cf.…

Jesus as the new Moses in Matthew’s Gospel

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Readers of Matthew’s Gospel have long pondered and puzzled over his references and allusions to the Old Testament Scriptures.

Bart Ehrman invites us to consider the story that Matthew tells in his first five chapters:

  • a male child is miraculously born to Jewish parents,
  • but a fierce tyrant in the land is set to destroy him.
  • The child is supernaturally protected from harm in Egypt.
  • Then he leaves Egypt and is said to pass through the waters (of baptism).
…

Eze 28:11-19 – Is Satan a fallen angel?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

28:11 The word of the LORD came to me: 28:12 “Son of man, sing a lament for the king of Tyre, and say to him, ‘This is what the sovereign LORD says:
“ ‘You were the sealer of perfection,
full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
28:13 You were in Eden, the garden of God.
Every precious stone was your covering,
the ruby, topaz, and emerald,
the chrysolite, onyx, and jasper,
the sapphire, turquoise, and beryl;
your settings and mounts were made of gold.…

Why Are There Differences In The Gospels? – 3

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Summarising chapter 3 of:

Licona, Michael R. Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography. Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Parallel Pericopes in Plutarch’s Lives

In this chapter, Michael Licona examines differences within thirty pericopes that appear two or more times within nine Lives written by Plutarch.

Here, I shall simply reproduce Licona’s own chapter summary:

In the fifty Lives written by Plutarch that have survived, we have focused our attention on nine, since they feature main characters who, for the most part, knew the main characters in the other Lives: Sertorius, Lucullus, Cicero, Crassus, Pompey, Cato Minor, Caesar, Brutus, and Antony.

…

‘Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?’ – 2

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Summarising chapter 2 of:

Licona, Michael R. Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography. Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Who Was Plutarch?

Plutarch (cAD 45 – cAD 120)  was a Greek philosopher, historian and biographer.  He wrote more than 60 ‘lives’ (biographies), of which about 50 survive.

There are important differences between ancient history and biography and their modern counterparts.  Ancient biography had its own literary conventions.  The biographer’s main aim was to illuminate the character of his subject. …