Tag: Israel
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Rethinking Jesus (08) The Pharisees (i)
In the Gospels, the Pharisees seem to be Jesus’ most persistent opponents, and Matthew devotes a whole chapter (23) to giving them what he clearly considers a well deserved roasting. Jesus is said to regard them as “Snakes and children of snakes”, “deserving of going to Hell’. “On the outside”, he says, “you appear good…
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Jesus the Messiah?
‘Messiah’ comes from Hebrew ‘mashiach’, referring to someone ‘anointed’ with oil, as a sign of being set apart for God’s service. It’s worth noting that the Hebrew Bible makes no reference to ‘the Messiah’. There are many ‘messiahs’, principally the Jewish Kings in the line of David who, like him, were anointed at their coronations.…
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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…
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Paul and the Bath Water
Like Jesus of Nazareth, Paul was a 1st century, ‘middle-eastern’, Jew. We can expect him to have different ways of seeing things from ours, and he doesn’t disappoint us. We have information, in the New Testament, about what’s said to have happened to him during his action-packed life. We shouldn’t forget, however, that Paul himself…
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The Ten Commandments
The 1st Commandment “You must not have any other gods before me”. In my lockdown spare time, I’m revisiting my long-ago degree in Hebrew and Old Testament, and I’m taking a fresh look at the 10 Commandments. In doing so, I’m discovering things that we’re not always made aware of (assuming, of course, that these…
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