I was at a fairly mainstream but non-traditional Anglican Church in east London on Sunday—mostly singles and young families. We had a good, thoughtful, and well presented sermon about the offence taken by the people of Nazareth at the wisdom and mighty works of Jesus (Matt. 13:53-58). I tried not to take offence at it but failed.

Ever wondered why the Jerusalem crowds turned against Jesus so abruptly—cheering him into the city at the start of the week, yelling for him to be crucified at the end of it? Lots of scholars think it all very improbable. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first some reflections on a hermeneutic that fuses narrative and history.

I saw this book in the Al-Faisal Museum for Arab-Islamic Art in Riyadh. It is described as a manuscript that sheds light on the “most important teaching methods employed by scholars and educators of Arab-Islamic civilization.” It’s not dated, but it’s going to be pretty old.

The notice with it outlines four of these methods:

1. The most important is “hearing”: “to document the books and collections and faithfully transmit their content.”

2. Riddles are used “to stimulate intellect and strengthen memory.”

3. Poetry fosters “connections between knowledge, grammar, and memory.”

4. By means of lexicons scholars “arrange linguistic content for easy reference.”

Did Paul proclaim a universal gospel? “Of course he did,” you mutter. Or: “Of course he did, you nutter!” What use is a non-universal gospel?

Well, on the train from Jeddah to Medina, I came across this paragraph in Neil Elliott’s Paul the Jew under Roman Rule: Collected Essays (2024):

According to the classic definition, an “evangelical” is a person who believes in and acts upon the “gospel”—in New Testament Greek the euangelion. As understood by evangelicals, the gospel is a statement about the significance of Jesus’ death on the cross: by his “blood” he made atonement for the sins of all people.

In his encomium in praise of the exalted Christ in Philippians 2:6-11, Paul says that “in the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue acknowledge (exomologēsētai) that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:10-11*). Interpreters of the Early High Christology school often point out that in Isaiah 45:23 these words have reference to YHWH. So has Paul hereby included Jesus in the divine identity?

I have dealt with this question a few times, most recently in “How Paul can proclaim one Lord Jesus Christ and not compromise Jewish monotheism,” and in a chapter in In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul. But it has come up again: