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!”…
Sara Parks makes some interesting observations about ways in which *Jesus often used both male and female examples in his teaching.
Jesus often taught the same lesson twice, using male- and female-oriented examples:
In some of these pairs, no people are mentioned at all. …
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.…
Bruce Milne writes
‘Properly understood…God’s judgment is good news as well as bad. The negative certainly arises for those who have committed evil and refused to repent. But there is a glorious positive here as well, for God’s judgment means nothing less than the establishing of his just and joyous reign, the putting right of all that has gone wrong, and the liberation of all things from the usurping reign of evil. It is this perspective that enables the psalmist to celebrate God’s judgments: ‘Let the heavens re- joice, let the earth be glad…let the fields be jubilant…the trees… will sing for joy…before the LORD, for he comes…to judge the earth…and the peoples in his truth’ (Ps.…
Dr Peter May is a retired GP who has taken a particular interest in claims of miraculous healing.
Dr May is not a thorough-going sceptic. He is a Christian who has served the church in a variety of ways over many years. He believes that God answers prayer, and that this might lead to the improvement or recovery of a sick person. He believes that the miracles attributed to Jesus actually happened.
But he does not believe that ‘Christ-like’ miracles occur today.…
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:
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.…
Based on this post, by Peter Mead.
Many Christians will acknowledge the existence of the devil. Yet few have any real sense of his activities in the world today.
Perhaps this is part of his genius: if he can’t persuade us of his non-existence, then he’ll convince us of his non-importance. And so he is left to do his malicious work unopposed by the prayers and actions of the faithful.
But consider this outline of biblical teaching on Satan:
1.…
Based on this post, by Brandon Hilgemann
1. Jesus spoke with authority
He was able to say: “You have heard that it was said…but I say…” (Matthew 5:22, 28, 32, 34, 39, 44).
The crowds were amazed because he taught as one with authority, unlike other teachers (Mark 1:22, Matthew 7:28-29).
We cannot preach on our own authority. But we can and must rest on the authority of Christ and his word.
2. Jesus told stories
He told countless parable. …
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.
