Following on from the discussion of whether Paul includes Jesus in the divine identity in 1 Corinthians 8:6, let’s consider the claim that Paul identifies Jesus with YHWH when he says, “Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy (parazēloumen)? Are we stronger than he?” (1 Cor. 10:22).

A lot of scholars think that Paul includes Jesus in the “divine identity” when he says that “for us there is one God, the Father… and one Lord, Jesus Christ…” (1 Cor. 8:6). Richard Bauckham, for example, notes that it is now “commonly recognized” that Paul has generated here a Christianized version of the Shema. It has become a central plank of the Early High Christology thesis. Can it take the weight?

Matthew Hartke describes himself on Twitter as a “Post-Christian Bible nerd endlessly fascinated with the historical Jesus and the origins of Christianity.” I had a bit of a debate with him a few years back in an Unbelievable podcast about whether Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet. I have some sympathy for his point of view.

This post follows up on a Twitter thread, in which Hartke argues that the most pertinent question regarding Jewish apocalyptic language is not whether it is literal or metaphorical but what “magnitude” of event was envisaged—I guess basically whether the event was on a historical or a cosmic scale.

Here are three missional challenges that the modern evangelical church needs urgently to get to grips with: 1) resist the extreme individualism and narcissism of western culture; 2) tell a compelling, up-to-date-and-beyond story about the living God, the communities that serve him in the name of Jesus, and where things are going; and 3) live out in public the radical and quite possibly uncomfortable consequences of that story.

Writing to Timothy, Paul (presumably) says that a woman should learn quietly in all submissiveness and not be allowed to teach and “exert influence over” (authentein) men because “Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and has come into transgression” (1 Tim. 2:13-14). I argued years ago in Speaking of Women: Interpreting Paul that the point here is not that Eve was deceivable but that the serpent deceived. I was given reason to reexamine this argument recently, and I want to add some further weight to it here.

Jesus did not tell moral fables. He was not a purveyor of uplifting Christian allegories that transcend time and space. He was a prophet in the mould of Isaiah or Ezekiel, telling disturbing, and sometimes deliberately disorienting, stories about the imminent impact of the kingdom of God on first century Israel. Very few, if any, of the parables have direct relevance outside of that historical context.

I rather overlooked the relevance of Jesus’ parable about an unforgiving slave in Matthew 18:23-35 for the recent debate about whether he interpreted the foreseen destruction of Jerusalem as God’s deliberate punishment of his people.