Thoughts on ethics, society, politics, religion, philosophy, theology, and everything in between
We do not have access to the original compositions of any of the books of the Bible. Instead, we have access to copies of copies of those compositions. Since the printing press did not exist in the ancient world, all those copies had to be painstakingly made by hand. Whenever a text is copied by … Read more
The Torah, Isaiah, and Modern Biblical Scholarship Traditionally, Christians have believed that the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) was in its entirety written by Moses. However, in the modern period, critical biblical scholars began to call this belief into question. A number of passages in the Torah contain historical details from after the … Read more
The Bible is not a single book. It is a collection of dozens of books written by many different authors over the course of centuries. Eventually, these books were acknowledged by the Church to be the inspired word of God and were collected into an official “canon” of Scripture, which we today call the Bible. … Read more
According to historic Christian orthodoxy, Jesus is God Incarnate, fully God and fully human. But is this what the earliest Christians believed? Skeptics often argue that it was not. The skeptical narrative runs something like this: the earliest Christians had a low Christology, believing Jesus to be just a man. Then, Christians started making grander … Read more
Jesus told His disciples, “Some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power” (Matt 16:28; Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27). He declared that people would “see the Son of Man [a reference to Himself] coming in clouds with great power and glory” (Mark 13:26, … Read more
Historical Jesus scholarship is a massive and complex field, which means that answering the question, “Are the Gospels historically reliable?” is not a simple task. Fully answering this question would require analyzing each part of each Gospel, and assessing whether it is an authentic saying or deed of Jesus. Engaging in this monumental task would … Read more
In one of the very first posts on this blog, I presented a summary of the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus. In this post, I revisit this topic, addressing a few additional issues I did not address in my original post. Historical Skepticism One approach sometimes used by skeptics to reject the reality … Read more
The idea that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises to His covenant people Israel is central and foundational to the message of the New Testament. The New Testament is filled with citations and allusions to Old Testament Scriptures, seeking to show that Jesus is the Messiah, the hope of Israel who brings Old Testament … Read more
Skeptics have often argued that the resurrection narratives of the four Gospels are hopelessly contradictory, and that this sheds doubt on the reality of Jesus’s resurrection. Now, it is certainly true that we have four very different resurrection narratives in the Gospels (this provides good evidence that these are independent eyewitness accounts, rather than a … Read more
In the book of Ephesians, Paul quotes Psalm 68:18 as saying, “When He ascended on high, He took captives, and gave gifts to His people” (Eph 4:8). However, the original Hebrew of Psalm 68:18 reads, “You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men.” This seems to … Read more