And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. //Scholars continue to argue about the Gnostic bent of John’s Gospel. Is John a Gnostic text or not? John’s Gospel was embraced by Gnostic strands before it ever made headway…
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Book review: 101 Myths of the Bible
by Gary Greenberg ★★★★★ This book wasn’t quite what I expected when I bought it, but I nevertheless enjoyed reading it. In my opinion, you won’t read conclusive evidence that the stories are myths; what you’ll read are possible explanations for 101 of the Bible’s legends, for scholarship has hardly settled upon many…
Genesis 35:10, Jacob becomes Israel
God said to him, “Your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel.” So he named him Israel. //There are two stories in the Bible of how Jacob’s name is changed to Israel. In the first, mentioned in a post a while…
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Book review: The Year of Living Biblically
by A. J. Jacobs ★★★★ Read any A. J. Jacobs before? This is more of the same serious humor he’s known for, this time on a topic dear to me: my Bible. Jacobs was raised in a secular family, but decided one day to dive into the world of the…
Luke 24:27, Moses wrote the Torah
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. //Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible. The Documentary Hypothesis in one form or another is nearly undisputable, as I described a few days ago…
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Book review: The Sins of Scripture
by John Shelby Spong ★★★★★ The subtitle of this book is Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love. I read this book a few years back, and the reason it came to mind today is because I am feeling overwhelmed by the aggressiveness of anti-Bible crusaders….
1 John 5:7-8, the Comma Johanneum
For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. //This is one of the…
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Book review: How the Bible Came to Be
by John Barton ★★★★ John Barton spent 15 years studying the making of the Bible. This brief booklet (less than 100 pages) presents his findings. He first gives a short synopsis of each of the 66 books of the Bible, and then dives into probable authorship and dating. From there,…
Ezekiel 28:12-13, the location of Eden
You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for…
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Book review: Carta’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem
by Israel Ariel and Chaim Richman ★★★★★ Rabbis Ariel and Richman represent the Temple Institute, founded in 1988 to “rekindle the flame of the Holy Temple in the hearts of mankind.” It houses a team of researchers of Temple-related subjects. This oversized book is a product of the Institute. This…