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 …
Salome was a dancer, she danced before the king.
She wiggled and she wobbled and she …
How many of you have ever connected the story of Jesus’ transfiguration with the Jewish celebration of Dedication/Hanukkah? We may well have imagined …
In this episode Jesus asks: “Can one read the signs correctly? Does a clear sunset today anticipate fair weather tomorrow? Do dark clouds announce the presence of a storm? …
Most people, who are related at least tangentially to the Christian faith, assume that Jesus was a miracle worker. By this they mean that he possessed the ability to …
Recently in my parish church, St. Peter’s in Morristown, New Jersey, I completed a seven week-lecture series on Matthew’s version of Jesus’ birth. In those lectures I pointed to …
Matthew has thus far mined the Hebrew Scriptures for texts that will advance his thesis that Jesus has fulfilled the Jewish messianic expectations. In the opening genealogy, he has …
I return to Matthew’s gospel today to lay out the case for its basic Jewishness. As I suggested in the opening column in this series last week, we must …
The first gospel to be written, the one we call Mark, was composed in the early years of the 8th decade (70-72). It contains no story of and no …
When most people think of the miracles included in the gospels, they usually think of a broad series of apparently supernatural acts. They tend not to be familiar with …