The Qur’an is not a work of literary narrative, as is the Bible. As a scripture that provides guidance (huda) and a reminder (tadhkira) to humankind, it gives more emphasis to spiritual edifications than to providing a full account of… Read More ›
Jesus
Does Tom Wright Believe Jesus Is God?
by Kermit Zarley I am sometimes asked, “Does Tom (N.T.) Wright believe Jesus is God?” Or I am told that he does not. I’m also asked the same question about Jimmy (J.D.G.) Dunn. Wright and Dunn are Brits. I know both… Read More ›
Thomas Aquinas and the gospels
Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) was an Italian Catholic priest and Doctor of the Church. He was an immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism. The Catholic Church reveres Thomas Aquinas as a saint and as… Read More ›
The Christian dilemma
Numbers 31 (NRSV) War against Midian 31 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Avenge the Israelites on the Midianites; afterward you shall be gathered to your people.” 3 So Moses said to the people, “Arm some of your number for the war, so that they may… Read More ›
Paul Williams and Lord Rowan Williams: Who Is Jesus In the Eyes of Muslims and Christians?
This is a dialogue between former Archbishop of Canterbury (head of the Church of England) and myself at Cambridge University. The Williams with the beard is the former Archbishop, the Williams without a beard is the Muslim. Very confusing..
A case of Gospel inflation
A Christian minister asked a really interesting question on Twitter: he notes ‘that Jesus is portrayed as referring to God as Father roughly 170 times while the OT does only about 11’. What are we to make of this, he asks?… Read More ›
Jesus remembered: ‘ideological tinkering must have gone on from the start’
Dale C. Allison Jr writes: ‘Some of my divinity students, who find themselves threatened by the discourse of the quest [for the historical Jesus], the chief categories of which derive not from Christian theology but from the modern study of… Read More ›
The God Julius Caesar
Reblogged from Professor Bart Ehrman’s Blog I mentioned in a previous post the scarcely-remembered-these-days Diogenes Poliorcetes (Diogenes, the Conqueror of Cities), who was acclaimed as a divine being by a hymn-writer (and others) in Athens because he liberated them from their… Read More ›
How Jesus became a god. Two Yale professors describe the historical process
Earlier I posted about an academic work I am reading by two of America’s leading biblical scholars entitled: King and Messiah as Son of God, Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature by Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins… Read More ›
Historical Jesus studies and the illusion of consensus
A sobering (if arguably unnecessarily skeptical) assessment of the state of Jesus studies in academia.
An Easter enquiry: ‘How are we made right with God according to Jesus?’
This Easter Christians ponder a story that has been told over and over for the past 2000 years: that the Jewish Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, made a sacrifice of his own life to make mankind right with God (variants of… Read More ›
What Bible scholars really think about John’s gospel you will probably never hear from your pastor/minister/priest
It is a curious fact that what scholars think of the historical value of John’s gospel is a million miles from what the man in the pew thinks: J.D.G. Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press ,1985, pp. 31-32…. Read More ›
