The recently retired US marathoner Ryan Hall is very outspoken about his faith. In numerous interviews, he speaks very publicly about how his Christian faith has been instrumental in guiding his running career. Examples of how Hall uses the Bible to guide his training include the following: He takes one day off a week, just […]
Of all the nations that have a bad rap in Western civilization, perhaps none has a more unfavorable reputation than the Philistines. In modern English, we use the term “Philistine” to refer to a crude or uncivilized person, who is “guided by materialism and is usually disdainful of intellectual or artistic value” (Merriam-Webster). The origin of this reputation is […]
Let’s Take Five #2. Many of us make a very common historical error when reading the Bible. We open up the first few chapters of the Book of Exodus and read about the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt, and we automatically imagine the slaves building pyramids. We might even assume, for instance, the ragged Hebrew slaves hauling the massive […]
In the next few blog posts, I will be doing something a bit different than I have in the past. Rather than addressing a Scriptural question about geography as I typically have, my aim will be to introduce you to a series of five sites that are interconnected thematically. I call this series Let’s Take Five. The themes linking […]
The Christian ritual of receiving bread and wine observed by billions around the world has many different names: holy communion, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, to name a few. Despite contemporary denominational differences, the common root of this widespread ritual is the Scriptural account of the Last Supper, quoted here: On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, […]
During the Hebrew month of Elul, which begins this week, it is customary for pious Jews to rise before dawn to recite Selichot. These are special penitential prayers asking God for forgiveness in order to spiritually prepare oneself for the upcoming New Year (“Rosh Hashanah”). One of the highlights of the Jewish New Year season […]
Moses is the most towering character of the first five books of the Bible. He is the template of the biblical leader, the model to which all subsequent biblical prophets and kings aspire. But he was an unusual leader in the sense that he was not a charismatic public speaker. What gave Moses’ words their […]
Every religion struggles with a basic conundrum. How to explain the involvement of a purely spiritual God in the details of a purely physical world? The solution to this enigma in Judaism is that the divine presence of God actually descends into the physical world to dwell among humans. The original Hebrew word for this […]
If you are a regular reader of this blog or have ever done any reading about the first century Land of Israel (other than the New Testament itself) chances are you will have come across the name “Josephus”. His name seems to pop up incessantly both in scholarly literature and in popular books on early Christianity, ancient […]
The Land of Israel can feel like paradise for many Christian pilgrims. Within a relatively small area, one can visit dozens of world famous churches built upon the very sites where events mentioned in the Bible actually took place. Among these famous churches, one of the least visited (indeed few people have even heard of […]
