I often present a standard spectrum of views on reading the gospels as history, one which extends from the conservative, or even fundamentalist side, which claims that all details of any type must be historical, to the opposite radical conclusion which claims that the gospels are entirely fiction. Most discussion goes on somewhere between that,…
I was reading from Darrell Bock’s book Jesus According to Scripture, and I was struck by a footnote. I’ve been reading from the passion narrative in Matthew, because it is the lectionary selection for this year, but I like to read Bock’s notes because he points out the similarities and differences between the various accounts….
Or I might title this “Was Jesus a Horse Thieving Magician?” I learned this story so long ago I don’t remember just when it was, but I got a Sunday School version that left me with the impression that because Jesus was God, either he knew everything, or his father revealed to him the location…
I scored a 74, progressive, but I object to almost all the questions and answers. The quiz is here. HT: 42
I frequently recommend reading the story of the exodus through conquest as a kind of connected narrative, trying to learn from the stories. The problem I’ve discovered is that many people skip over the ceremonial and legal parts of the Bible and thus often miss important narrative points that are interleaved with those elements. Ultimately,…
It is sometimes difficult to discuss scriptural issues involved in many modern debates simply because there is so little explicit liberal hermeneutic. It’s not that there is no liberal hermeneutic; it’s simply that so few people are aware of such a thing, and it’s so badly communicated to people in the pews. Moderates have succeeded…
I’m frequently struck by how often we deal with trivia in our Bible study. In some cases we might not call it “trivia” but we certainly are dealing with something other than the main message of the text–the stuff that is in black and white. We imagine what the characters might have said, we fill…
I’m not going to link to a specific edition on this, because there is no ISBN in the edition from which I’m working. It appears to be a match for this item on Amazon.com, and to be essentially the same notes as this item, though I cannot be absolutely certain. If you have a similar…
Since I’ve been attending a lectionary discussion group during Wednesday lunch, and therefore spending more time on the lectionary texts, I’ve been interested in the way the texts are selected. For this coming Sunday, Epiphany, one of the texts is Isaiah 60:1-6. “Now what could possibly be interesting about that?” you might ask. I’m glad…
Many of us have discussed the problem, as we see it, of young people leaving the church when they become adults, and sometimes–too rarely–returning at a later time. Sometimes people have complacently told me, “Oh, they’ll be back when they have children of their own, but it doesn’t always work that way. In this video…