The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, has recently been in the news for lambasting Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg for being gay. The younger Graham follows in his father’s footsteps in regarding homosexuality as a sin, something to be repented of. According to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), of […]
Jesus of Nazareth
Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle
As we saw earlier, Mary Magdalene is a figure in the New (Christian) Testament of the Bible worth considering by us moderns. She is significant, in part, because she is so prominent in the canonical Christian texts: she appears numerous times in the New Testament and in all four gospels: Mt 27.55-56, 61; 28.1; Mk […]
Index to the Third Year
Thank you as always for checking in with WisdomWordsPPF! Here is a guide to the past year of blog posts (note that some posts appear in several categories). If you want a guide to the first year (October 2015-October 2016), you can find it here, and a guide to the second year (October 2016-October 2017) […]
The “Wild Child” Jesus: Tales from the Apocryphal Literature
Those of us who call ourselves Christian, or at least have respect and reverence for the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, generally know this man from a very serious, upstanding and ethical perspective. Jesus the man is usually characterized as kind, compassionate, gentle, wise, courageous, obedient to God, a healer, a teacher, and an innocent […]
The Feminine/Androgynous Jesus
Jesus was a man, right? In the New (Christian) Testament of the Bible he certainly was. However, in the first few centuries of the Common Era (CE), images of Jesus were not limited to male. During this era, a great deal of Christian literature, generally called “apocryphal” or “extra-canonical,” circulated but did not make it […]
Trinities: Historical Alternatives to “Father, Son and Holy Ghost”
The concept of God as Father resonates well with many religious Jews and Christians. The all-male Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit – is so ingrained for Christians that our faith without it seems somehow heretical or false. In recent years, however, the idea of God as Father, for many people whose human […]
The Trials and Tribulations of Translating Scripture 3: The Work of the Jesus Seminar
Voting about the words and deeds of Jesus – ee gads! This is how many people respond when they hear about the Jesus Seminar. In this post, we will pick up on our two previous posts about translating and interpreting Biblical texts with a look at Westar Institute, home of the Jesus Seminar. (In the […]
The Trials and Tribulations of Translating Scripture 2: Pitfalls and Challenges
In Trials and Tribulations 1, we presented an overview of the history of the Bible and the various ancient manuscripts that scholars have used over the centuries to translate Biblical texts from the original languages into other languages. We noted that translating from ancient languages and incomplete manuscripts copied centuries later present challenges to translators […]
The Trials and Tribulations of Translating Scripture 1: Introduction
The Bible: a vitally important text in Western history. Contrary to some popular misperceptions: not one book but many; not written in King James English but in at least three ancient languages; and not originally written but rather passed down orally for generations. It should go without saying, then, that translating a collection of ancient […]