“The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were flocking to him, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins.” (Mark 1:5)
Around A.D. 30 a Jewish rabbi came out of the Judean wilderness, dressed a little like the Geico caveman, to call on fellow Jews to come to the Jordan River, repent from their sins against YHWH and be baptized. In fact, later, Jesus himself would come to be baptized by John.
It’s hard to believe that only 50 years ago no one knew the origin of what is perhaps the greatest human invention of all time: writing.
The clues lay in artifacts that had gathered dust for years in some of the world’s greatest museums. Only recently have historians and archaeologists put many of the pieces together which have helped us to unlock the mysteries of the origin of writing. That is the story I hope to summarize here. Read the rest of this entry »
The nice part about studying the birth of Jesus is that there’s only two ancient texts that talk about it: The New Testament Gospels of Matthew & Luke.[1]
The hard part about studying the birth of Jesus is that there’s only two ancient texts that talk about it. For historians, this means they have to try and piece together what actually happened from only two authors’ witnesses.
Read the rest of this entry »
Scholars have long noted that the writings of the minor prophets[1], those 12 books that close the Christian “Old Testament”[2] end with three very similar sayings. Scholars call these sayings massa’ot, or singular, massa’ (pronounced MAH-sah). So what’s a massa’ ?
“Reading the Bible in a translation is like kissing your bride through the veil.“ -Hayim Nahman Bialik, Israeli Poet
In high school I imagined spending my life in politics, so after I graduated I enrolled at the University of Michigan with a declared major in “political science” with a minor in “pre-law.” During that year my life took a drastic turn. I became a committed Christian when I was 15, but that year my heart moved toward being a pastor, which eventually led me from UofM to a small Bible college in South Carolina. Or as a professor of mine has said, I went from “law to grace.”
