[S]o everything will live where the river goes.

//One day, Ezekiel saw a vision of the City of God. In the center of the city was a glorious temple, and flowing from that temple was a stream of water; first small, then larger and larger, until it became a river impossible to cross.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. –Romans 8:28

After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.

//After the rain stopped and the flood waters began to abate, Noah had to decide when it was safe to exit the ark. Remember, there was only one window in the ark and it pointed skyward, away from the ground. So had all the water receded or not?

Noah sent a raven forth, hoping it would go in search of land, but the raven just flew around in circles. Stupid raven! Next, Noah sent out a dove who returned because it had nowhere to land. A week later Noah sent the dove out again, and it quickly returned with a freshly plucked olive leaf as a sign that it was safe to open the door of the ark.

Why was the dove more helpful than the raven? After all, ravens are the smartest bird there is. A raven’s brain is as large (proportionally to its body) as a chimpanzee’s, and they share the cognitive capacities of primates. It’s a mystery how this raven failed.

So the rabbis thought long and hard, and in the Midrash that developed, the raven gets to explain his point of view, speaking eloquently to Noah. There were only two ravens aboard the ark, the raven pointed out, and if perchance he never found his way back to the ark, he would be unable to mate. What a disaster: the world would be short of one type of creature! Other rabbis explained that the raven questioned Noah’s trustworthiness. What if Noah had designs on the raven’s wife? Better to hang around the ark and not go on Noah’s mission.

So the raven flew in circles, never leaving the ark.

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.

//If you want to stay on Paul’s good side, stay away from food that was offered to pagan deities. This was a common practice in antiquity; meat would be offered as a sacrifice to the gods, and then retrieved and eaten. If you read my book about Revelation you are familiar with this practice. In fact, Revelation explicitly condemns one church for doing this:

The author of Hebrews, in these two verses, compares Jesus to a determined runner who stays faithful until the end, despising the shame. So determined is he to finish that he casts aside every weight.

Readers in Jesus’ day would have been quite familiar with the races to which Hebrews alludes. In the Greek games, runners ran completely naked … they cast aside every weight.

Does the author allude to the shameful crucifixion of Jesus? We know that Romans crucified their victims naked so as to add as much shame as possible.

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

//James is a curious book. Perhaps it’s best known for encouraging works over faith. Thought by some to have been written by the brother of Jesus, it reflects no personal knowledge of Jesus, and indeed, contains very little Christian content. But for verses 1:2 and 2:1, it may as well be a Jewish document.

So where did it really come from? Sometime when you’re up for an interesting study, compare these verses in James to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew (thought to have been collated from the hypothetical Q document). This comparison stems from P. J. Hartin’s James and the Q Sayings of Jesus, 1991.

Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind.

//This is an odd verse. John, writing in the tenth decade of the first century, should be well aware that such a claim was made of others besides Jesus. Eighteenth century philosopher David Hume reminds us that “One of the best attested miracles in all profane history, is that which Tacitus reports of Vespasian, who cured a blind man in Alexandria, by means of his spittle” (precisely the way Jesus healed a blind man). Vespasian was the emperor of Rome a decade or two before John wrote his Gospel.