Did Jesus eliminate the Jewish food laws, known as kashrut? Did he announce that they no longer mattered and that what did matter was an ethical lifestyle? This is the belief of many Christians who take as their evidence the words of Jesus (or rather an editorial aside written by the author of the Gospel …
Tag: Jesus
Tis the Season…
In honor of the Christmas season, I have bumped a number of my posts dealing with the birth of Jesus to the top of my blog site for easy access. They deal with such topics as the date of Jesus's birth, the composition of typical nativity scenes, the possibility that Jesus went to Egypt, the …
When Did Christianity Really Begin?
This may seem like an obvious question. Many would answer that Christianity began with Christ. Others, thinking a bit deeper, might assert that the apostle Paul really began Christianity. But, historically speaking, both answers would be wrong. It is commonplace to assume that the religion called Christianity is as old as its namesake. Unfortunately, there …
The Woman Caught in Adultery: A Story of the Historical Jesus?
Most Christians, and many non-Christians, are familiar with this story from the Gospel of John (7:53-8:11). A group of “scribes and Pharisees” bring a woman before Jesus while he is in Jerusalem. They disclose that they have caught her in the act of adultery. In addition, they cite the Torah rule (Lev 20:10) that says …
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Jesus Bested by a Woman! The Story of the Syro-Phoenician Woman
There is a very unusual story in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 7:24-30) picked up by, and amplified in, the Gospel of Matthew (Mat 15:21-28). It concerns a desperate woman requesting an exorcism from Jesus. Now that doesn't sound so unusual. People, both men and women, requested healings and exorcisms from Jesus seemingly on a …
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Did Jesus Nullify the Torah?
Did Jesus instruct his Jewish listeners and disciples that the Torah, or Jewish law – the first five books of modern Bibles, traditionally attributed to Moses – was rendered irrelevant with his coming? There are certainly no unequivocal statements by Jesus in the gospels that say so. Yet many Christians from ages past until today …
The First “Apostle to the Gentiles”? The Possessed Man from Gergesa
Among the earliest messengers (Greek = apostolos) proclaiming the messiahship of Jesus were the twelve specially chosen disciples and, later, secondary followers of Jesus who learned about him from those who knew him. Initially, these messengers limited their target audience to Jews; after all, the Jewish messiah had come; they based their belief on prophecies …
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The Underappreciated Story of the Samaritan Woman
There are precious few stories in the gospels in which Jesus converses with women. Even fewer are those that grant the woman conversant a voice. Among the latter examples are the conversations between Jesus and the sisters Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42; John 11:21-27, 32). The conversation we are interested in today is the one …
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Was Jesus’s Baptism an Embarrassment to His Early Followers?
Why would anyone even ask such a question? Didn’t Jesus’s baptism become the prototype for Christian baptism, a practice that was carried out by his followers as evidenced in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul? How could that have embarrassed anyone who claimed to follow Jesus? To the analytical mind of …
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The Virginal Conception of Jesus: A Historian’s Assessment
You may already be thinking that if this is to be a “historical” assessment, then it is likely that the entire concept of virginal conception (not “virgin birth”; that is something entirely different) will be dismissed as a mythical fable. But not so fast. History may mean one thing to us today and another thing …
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David Christian Clausen 