Charting a New Reformation, Part XXIV – The Seventh Thesis, The Resurrection (continued)

Last week, we explored the Pauline corpus of the New Testament in order to learn what Paul meant when he wrote that “God raised Jesus” to the “right hand …

Re-Creating Easter VII: The Internal Process

Peter had so clearly wanted to be loyal to Jesus following his arrest. The story is told that he tried to follow Jesus into the courtyard of the high …

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 …

Part XLVII Matthew: The Meaning of the Passion opens into the Meaning of Resurrection

The drama of the cross races towards its conclusion. It is a story that runs counter to the cultural expectations. Shaped by the “Servant” figure, drawn from II Isaiah, …

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 XLII Matthew – Identifying the Sources of the Passion Narrative

If we can demonstrate that Jesus never spoke the words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” from the cross, but that rather the earliest gospel writers, …

Part XLI Matthew – Entering the Passion Narratives

We looked last week at the passion narratives in the New Testament. We noted the additions, the deletions and the contradictions found in these central stories of our faith …

Jewish Symbols of the Lamb Applied to Jesus- Part III

The Lamb Before Its Accusers

In addition to the Passover lamb and the lamb of Yom Kippur, there is a third lamb of God in the Jewish …

“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 …