Why Jesus? First impressions…

Immediately after his baptism, Jesus is led by the Spirit to re-enact Israel’s journey through the wilderness. He is not “tempted” by the “tempter” but “tested” (peirasthēnai) by the “tester” (ho peirazōn), just as God led Israel in the wilderness “so that he might distress you and test (ekpeirasēi) you and discern the things in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not” (Deut. 8:2 LXX). So when the devil suggests that Jesus should turn stones into bread to prove the validity of his new vocation, Jesus quotes from the continuation of this passage in Deuteronomy:

And he distressed you and let you hunger and fed you with manna with which your fathers were not acquainted in order to announce to you that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes out through the mouth of God man shall live. (Deut. 8:3; cf. Matt. 4:4)

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The Evangelical Alliance UK commentary on Paul’s discussion of same-sex relationships in Romans 1:26-27
I had reason to look at the UK Evangelical Alliance’s latest report on same-sex relationships this week: Relationships Matter: Affirmations Commentary. It was published last year and updates previous reports (1998, 2012) following the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2013. It is… ()
Paul and Philo (within Judaism) within paganism
It looks like the next phase in the study of Paul, after the New Perspective on Paul and Paul within Judaism, will be Paul (within Judaism) within paganism. See, for example, Paul Within Paganism: Restoring the Mediterranean Context to the Apostle, edited by Chantziantoniou,… ( | 2 comments)
Further reflections on the resurrection of Jesus
David has provided a very nice commentary on my previous post about the resurrection of Jesus on the third day. He has made it clear that he gets the main contention about the historical framing: “Too often we read the New Testament as if it dropped out of the sky rather than emerging… ()
He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures
If we think that the resurrection of Jesus is the climactic event in the testimony of the early church, constituting the triumph of life over death for all humanity, we are missing the point.At the beginning of an extensive discussion of resurrection, Paul recapitulates the “gospel” which he had… ( | 3 comments)
Joel Green on the kingdom of God, part 4
In a fourth piece on the kingdom of God, Joel Green argues that the kingdom of God is a “master lens through which the nature of reality is disclosed and by which all rival accounts of reality are measured.” It is not a doctrine, it is a way of seeing. That sounds like a very modern notion. Is it… ()
Joel Green on the kingdom of God, part 3
In his rather short third post on the kingdom of God, Joel Green begins by asking what we can learn about God’s royal rule by examining how the expression is used in the Gospels. He summarises the various contexts: the kingdom of God is entered, proclaimed, possessed, has drawn near, etc. Then he… ()
Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction
This is a rather technical examination of Jason Staples’ argument in Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites that when Paul speaks of Israel as “vessels of wrath,” he does not mean that the people are are the objects of God’s wrath; rather they are… ()