On this day in 63 BCE, Gaius Octavius Thurinus was born. When he was nineteen, he would become the adopted heir of his great-uncle, Julius Caesar. We know him as Octavianus or Caesar Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome.
Later during his reign, his birth was celebrated as that of a Savior, as is recorded in the Greek Priene Calendar Inscription:
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A group I meet with on Thursday nights has been studying the Gospel of John, and as we’ve progressed I’ve been working my way through it in Greek, trying to do my own translation. What I’ve found is that I have great sympathy and empathy for Bible translators, who (among a multitude of other struggles) are so often forced to take all the nuanced options in original languages and reduce them to one. Or they have to take wordplays in one language and try to figure out solutions for making them work in translation (or not). Sometimes, however, I wonder “Why did they make that translation choice!?” because for one reason or other it just doesn’t make sense to me. One of those passages is John 15:1-4. Continue reading
Two scholars, Bart Ehrman and Craig Evans, are having a debate over Ehrman’s positioni in his recently released How Jesus Became God that Jesus’ body would not have been buried. Evans makes the case otherwise.
While I agree with Evan’s position that Jesus was, in fact, buried, Ehrman is a good scholar, and this post on his blog describing crucifixion is well written. Here is an important snippet:
There’s a lot going on with Pauline studies in the theological world (as if that’s anything new). It can really be difficult to keep up with in terms of reading. N.T. Wright’s latest work, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, has over 1700 pages! If you’re interested in a brief synopsis where things are concerning Pauline studies from Wright’s perspective, the attached video of Wright being interviewed by Michael J. Gorman is a good start. (Thanks to Kurt Willems for posting it).
According to reports in LiveScience, new archeological discoveries related to the Urartians, Scythians, and Assyrians are being made in the northern ares of Iraq (in Kurdistan). This comes in the midst of the political and social conflicts in the region: Continue reading
Professor Lawrence Shiffman, in part three of a series on Schisms in Jewish History, has written a nice summary of some of the differing groups that would have been active near the lifetime of Jesus. Some of these, the Pharisees and Sadducees, are mentioned in the New Testament. What is often missed in our understanding of the first century Jewish world is the level of diversity present within it. Continue reading
Okay, so I have a lot of pet peeves.
One of them is when someone makes expert-like claims about this or that in the Bible as it’s related to Hebrew or Greek when it is obvious they have no knowledge of either language.
So today I’m responding to an article a friend shared on Facebook (I know, I know: people with pet peeves should never even get close to Facebook). The article was titled “Cain’s Wife—Who Was She?” and is apparently part 6 of a series by Ken Ham, a fairly well-known Christian apologist (you know, the one who debated Bill Nye). This article (though written in 2007) is apparently headlining the Answers in Genesis (Ham’s apologetics organization) homepage today.
John Hobbins over at Ancient Hebrew Poetry made a good post recently about Martin Luther’s thoughts concerning the importance of Hebrew and Greek. I thought I would share a couple of his quotes (but do read his original post!).
[originally posted April 2009, some edits have been made to update links.]
Since we are on the eve of Good Friday, I thought I might share some information on early depictions of Christ’s crucifixion.
Given all the hubbub about eclipses (lunar and solar) lately, and how such events are interpreted as having potential prophetic or symbolic meanings for Israel and the world, I thought I would do a quick search of what Jewish extra-biblical sources say about celestial eclipses. Here are the results:
Tomorrow is the beginning of Passover. Dr. James F. Strange has a really good post over at the American Schools for Oriental Research (ASOR) blog about Passover practices in the first century. I encourage you to read it in it’s entirety. Here are some excerpts:
You may be seeing headlines today on various news sources about the “Jesus Wife” manuscript. While students of ancient Christian texts from the early to Medieval period will find this fascinating, most of the headlines are sensationalistic. It’s important to note that this Coptic manuscript looks to be from the 8th century and has very little potential to have any connection to the historical Jesus.