Resurrection – Myth or Reality, Part II: The Witness of Paul

The first writer of what later came to be called the New Testament was a well-educated Jew from Tarsus in Asia Minor. His name was Paul, although there is a later tradition that suggested that his original name was Saul and that the change from Saul to Paul was symbolic of the change in his life from being a highly-disciplined member of the Jewish religious elite to being a follower of Jesus. The adjective “Jewish” in that sentence is important because at this time in history, there was no such thing as Christianity or the Christian Church. What we now call Christianity was still a minority movement within the synagogue itself called “The Followers of the Way.” These followers were also known by members of the Orthodox Party of Judaism as “revisionists.” That was a deliberately pejorative title. “Revisionists” in ecclesiastical circles means that they were “change agents” destabilizing the “True Faith.”

Part XLVI Matthew – Other Minor Characters in the Passion Drama

Once we begin to see the Passion narrative not as history, but as liturgy that was created to interpret the meaning of Jesus, the literal imprisonment that has been …

Part XLIII Matthew – The Passion Narrative: Discovering the Liturgical Outline

In Matthew’s story of the Passion of Jesus, based as it is on Mark’s original written passion narrative, we can discover by a close analysis the outline of a …

Jewish Symbols of the Lamb Applied to Jesus- Part II

Part II:  The Lamb of Yom Kippur

“Think Different–Accept Uncertainty” Part XVII: The Story of the Crucifixion, Part Two

It is certainly a fact of history that a man named Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by the Romans somewhere around the year 30 CE.  This crucifixion came during the …

“Think Different–Accept Uncertainty” Part XVI: The Story of the Crucifixion, Part One

Somewhere between a third and forty percent of each of the four gospels in the New Testament is concerned with the last week in the life of Jesus of …