Tag: Apocalypse
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Rethinking Jesus (06) His Core Message
According to Mark, (the earliest Gospel), after his baptism and self-questioning in the wilderness, and “after John (the Baptist) had been put into prison”, Jesus launched an evangelistic mission in Galilee, but there’s a complication here. In John’s gospel, Jesus, “in the province of Judea, spent some time with his disciples and baptised”, and, “The…
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Rethinking Jesus (05) Apocalypse Now
If we’re to understand Jesus the Jew, in the context of first century Palestine, we have to give attention to the appearance of Apocalypses, from around 200 BCE to 200 CE. During that time, there were Jewish apocalypses, supposedly written by Enoch, Zephaniah, Ezra and Baruch etc. Apocalyptic writings were also included in the Dead…
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Jesus and the Church
Did Jesus intend to be the founder of a “Christian Church”, which would first ‘supersede’, and then separate itself from, his own Jewish religion? To answer this, it seems to me that we must strip away 2,000 years of exegesis and christology, and try to recapture the religious views of a 1st century Palestinian Jew,…
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The Gospels (3) ‘Jesus as Apocalyptic Preacher’
Ccontinung this series of posts, I’m writing about the Gospels as literature, and as religious ‘tracts’ designed to confirm to believers, and to persuade non-believers, that Jesus is the Son of God, Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the World, and that their contents should be understood as having been selected and shaped with that…