My summer reading program has essentially concluded with two recommended volumes that together cover much of the same ground. Bruce D. Chilton’s Resurrection Logic: How Jesus’ First Followers Believed God Raised Him from the Dead (Baker, 2019) was followed a year later by Bart D. Ehrman’s Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (Simon …
Continue reading Your Beliefs about the Afterlife: Are They Christian?
The notion of multiple persons in the godhead is normally thought to be a Christian innovative change to Judaism’s distinctive monotheism. But is it? UC Berkeley professor Daniel Boyarin, in his book The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, provides compelling evidence that the trinitarian, or at least binatarian, notion of God, has …
Continue reading One God in Multiple Persons: A Christian Idea?
In his groundbreaking work, Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity, Stevan L. Davies makes the case that scholars have largely overlooked a major component of early Christian culture and ideology: that of spirit possession. Most readers of the gospels are familiar with Jesus exorcising demonic spirits from a number of victims …
Continue reading Spirit-Possession: A Hallmark of the Earliest Church?
Even in the 21st century, we are not without our warnings about the end of the world – euphemistically referred to as “the apocalypse.” Cults continue to arise predicting the end and even forecasting specific dates as to when it will happen. Movies and TV shows offer fictional recreations of the apocalypse. The atom bomb …
Continue reading “The Apocalypse is Coming!” But Where Did It Come From?
Baptism comes from the Greek word baptizo which means “to immerse” in the sense of making clean with water. Ritual washings were commonplace in the first-century, Greco-Roman world. The purpose was not hygienic but sacred: such washings symbolized purification in anticipation of performing some holy ritual or entering sacred space. From archaeological discoveries, it appears …
It may be surprising to learn that early Christians did not initially agree as to the form in which Christ was raised from the dead. Possibly this is because relatively few claimed to have seen him and even fewer left any details about the experience. Ultimately, the church had to decide if Christ’s fleshly body …
Continue reading In the Flesh? In Spirit Only? The Nature of the Risen Christ
Although mentioned several times in the New Testament, Jesus’s brother James remains a shadowy figure. He is named in the Gospel of Mark as one of Jesus’s four brothers along with Joses (“little Joseph”), Judas (Judah), and Simon (Mark 6:3). None of the four gospels report much, if any, participation by the brothers in the …
Recently, the United Methodist General Conference for 2019 passed a controversial piece of legislation called The Traditional Plan which essentially affirms “the church’s current bans on ordaining LGBTQ clergy and officiating at or hosting same-sex marriage” (www.umnews.org). Supporters characterized the plan as adhering to “biblical” values. Members who supported a more liberal plan, called The …
Continue reading Early Christian Teaching on Same-gender Sex
The question of whether the disciples of Jesus ceased sacrificing at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem following his death is one that comes up occasionally among scholars interested in understanding the very earliest form of Christ-belief. This question has come up again in a new book by Paula Fredriksen, When Christians Were Jews: The First …
Continue reading Did the First Jewish Believers in Jesus Continue to Sacrifice at the Temple?
Every now and then, the subject of Jesus’s celibacy is raised, usually in connection with Mary Magdalene who some suggest was his wife. Still others believe that the tomb of Jesus has been found in Jerusalem, a tomb that contained the remains of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and their son. While the jury is still out …
Continue reading The Bloodline of Jesus? Descendants of the Holy Family
David Christian Clausen 