by admin | May 27, 2012 | Jesus' Artifacts, What Kind of Carpenter is Jesus?
I’m not fooling anyone. There is probably a strong suspicion that I’m going to shape things in such a way that I can come to the conclusion that Jesus is a pretty good carpenter. A typical approach would be for me to establish the criteria—a good carpenter does A,...
by admin | May 27, 2012 | Adultery in the Law, Section One, Sexual Immorality
The translators of the New American Bible1 chose the marriage is unlawful for πορνεία in Matthew 5:32 [Table]. So I will substitute that translation in the NET: But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the marriage is unlawful, makes her...
by admin | May 26, 2012 | Jesus' Artifacts, What Kind of Carpenter is Jesus?
While I am asking—“What is truth? What is faith? Who is God? What is He trying to say to us?”—trying to come to some understanding of Bible passages in their complete contexts, millions of priests, pastors, preachers and Bible teachers all over the world open their...
by admin | May 26, 2012 | Adultery in the Law, Section One, Sexual Immorality
I first entertained the idea that πορνεία in the New Testament might be defined by Leviticus 20:11-21 because of the similarity in word order between Matthew 15:19 (NET) and the Law in Exodus 20:2-17 (NET) Exodus 20:2-17 (NET) Matthew 15:19 (NET) “I, the Lord, am your...
by admin | May 25, 2012 | Adultery in the Law, Section One, Sexual Immorality
I want to study the background information in the Old Testament to see if I can understand what Jesus, Paul and the New Testament writers meant by πορνεία. Since I’m treating πορνεία like the unknown X, I’ll track the Hebrew word נָאַף (nā’ap̄), equivalent to...
by admin | May 19, 2012 | Section One, Sexual Immorality
Since I am uncomfortable with immorality as potentially too broad a translation of πορνεία I’ll treat it like an unknown X. So if I remove X from the equations so to speak I get a clearer view of Jesus’ meaning without X. I might even gain some insight into ways to...
by admin | May 18, 2012 | Section One, Sexual Immorality
Perhaps this is as good a time as any to say that I take it for granted that Jesus spoke Greek, and that those who heard him understood him perfectly well in what was by then, more than three centuries after the conquest of Alexander the Great, their native tongue. ...
by admin | May 17, 2012 | A Monotonous Cycle, What Kind of Carpenter is Jesus?
Though I’ve been proposing that God intervened in Israel’s history to divide the kingdom of Israel, his primary method seems to have been nonintervention. God allowed people who rebelled against him by seeking a king in the first place to continue on that same...
by admin | May 16, 2012 | A Monotonous Cycle, What Kind of Carpenter is Jesus?
I don’t know how public Solomon was with his discontent, but I doubt he kept his secrets any better than other politicians. Having heard everything, I have reached this conclusion, he wrote in the end of Ecclesiastes. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is...
by admin | May 15, 2012 | Forgiveness, Introduction
Jesus gave his disciples the following rule (Matthew 10:32, 33 NET): Whoever, then, acknowledges (ὁμολογήσει, a form of ὁμολογέω) me before people, I will acknowledge (ὁμολογήσω, another form of ὁμολογέω) before my Father in heaven.1 But whoever denies (ἀρνήσηται, a...