Tag: Messiah
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That Christmas ‘Star’
One Christmas ‘tradition’ that continues to amuse me, is the annual attempt to cobble up credible ‘explanations’ of the nature and behaviour of the ‘Christmas Star’. It appears only in Matthew’s Gospel but (all credit to the writer’s imagination) it never fails to make an ‘other worldly’ impact on readers of his story. In the…
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A Boring Christmas Genealogy?
Why does the Bible contain lists of ancestors which are hardly enthralling? One, in 1st Chronicles, is 9 chapters long, making the book chronic-ally unappealing! Their purpose is establishing legitimacy. The king in Jerusalem, had to be a proven descendant of King David; a Temple priest had to be a descendant of Aaron, Moses’ brother. …
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Jonah – A Good-Fun Read (iii)
We lost sight of Jonah when, on our hero’s uncompromising insistence, the good-hearted sailors very reluctantly tossed him into the sea. At once the inestimable power of Jonah’s God was demonstrated, in the immediate and complete calming of what had been an overwhelmingly tempestuous sea. No great surprise then, that in the New Testament, Jesus…
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Rethinking Jesus (13) A Saviour from Sin?
Jesus earliest followers most likely believed that he was the promised Jewish Messiah, who would become the king of a restored Israel after the imminent, cataclysmic arrival of the earthly Kingdom of God. Let’s try, then, to grasp their traumatic shock and potential despair, when he was arrested, cruelly humiliated, and crucified. That was the…
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Rethinking Jesus (12) God in the flesh?
It’s my belief that Jesus made no claim to be Yahweh, the Jewish God, made flesh. As a devout Jew, such a claim would’ve stuck in his throat. In John’s Gospel, he does say, “I am”, which is what God called himself in the Book of Exodus. That Gospel, however, belongs to the late 1st…
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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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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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Rethinking Jesus (03) and John the Baptist
Let’s return to that day in the late 20s CE, when a 30 year old Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, appeared on the banks of the river Jordan, where a charismatic preacher was baptising people in its waters. Since Jesus was obviously attracted by what he was seeing and hearing, even to the extent of casting…
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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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