Tongues Speaking in the Early Church

I have realised that when it comes to tongues speaking we have read a lot of modern practices and ideas into the New Testament instead of them being supported by the text.

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Text-Collections and an Emergent NT Canon

Larry Hurtado's Blog

A recent survey of the contents of Christian manuscripts from the first three centuries focuses on identifying which texts were combined in the same manuscript:  Michael Dormandy, “How the Books Became the Bible:  The Evidence for Canon Formation From Work-Combination in Manuscripts,” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 23 (2018):  1-39.  (TC is an open-access and online journal:  available here.)

After laying out carefully his method and his gathering of data (using the Leuven Database of Ancient Books), Dormandy then classifies extant manuscripts (including very fragmentary ones) as to the level of certainty that we can attain in determining whether the manuscripts contained more than one text, and, if so, what texts they contained.  His approach is cautious and careful, which makes his conclusions all the more sound.

Dormandy coins the term “collection-evident” to designate collections of texts that combine texts that came to form part of…

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Watch “Siege of Jerusalem 70 AD – Great Jewish Revolt DOCUMENTARY” on YouTube

Talmidimblogging

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The Bible and the Ancient Near East

Just as knowing something about the 18^th century Enlightenment, Colonial American history, and the men who attended the Constitutional Convention will inform your historical understanding of the U.S. Constitution, knowing something about ancient Near Eastern history and culture will deepen your historical understanding of the documents that compose the Hebrew Bible.

Rethinking Heaven, Hell and New Creation with N.T. Wright

The lecture below represents and distils much of N.T. Wright’s significant contribution to Christian thought and theology over the last four decades.

The Politics of the Passion

The crucifixion of Christ is mostly understood to have moral, spiritual and religious meanings. The cross is not usually associated with politics. While it is certainly true that in the New Testament the cross does have religious and moral significance, crucifixion was clearly understood and presented as a political act in the gospels.

The History behind Pilate

I am not usually a fan of documentaries about the Bible because they often have a sensationalist bent to them. However, the history 2004 documentary Pilate: The Man Who Killed Christ is avoids that by carefully examining and presenting Ponitus Pilate’s role in the crucifixion of Jesus in the context of Jewish-Roman relations in the first century AD. Among the experts it consults are prominent New Testament scholars N.T. Wright, Helen Bond and John M.G. Barclay. What I particularly love about this documentary is it offers much needed historical perspective on the crucifixion accounts in the New Testament which challenges the wrongheaded notion that Jewish people were to blame for Christ’s death. You can watch the full documentary below.