Borrowing from the old adage, “all roads lead to Rome”, it appears that all ancient Mediterranean cities led to Christianity. Even despite Christianity being a minor movement in the first century, the sophisticated (for ancient times), Roman-designed travel routes throughout the Mediterranean and Asia Minor allowed early Christians to mingle with other cultures and gain…
Category: Theology Articles
The Dichotomy of Condemnation and Hope: The Major Themes of Ezekiel, Second Isaiah, and Third Isaiah
Ezekiel As a combination prophet and priest who lived in the thick of the exile, and whose allegorically vivid words not only resemble how earlier prophets expressed themselves, but also have a priestly authority to them (Boadt et al. 338, 339), Ezekiel is credited for writing one of the most detailed accounts of the exile….
Back to the Future IV: The Exile — through the Eyes of Moses?
Studying Deuteronomy is like watching a time travel movie, or other mind-bending story, where it is hard to tell whether the protagonist is still in the past, or was always in the present, or is in a perpetual loop of appearing in the past, yet still in the present, yet actually in the past, and…
Ohh, to be a Prophet in the Ancient World…
What images come to mind when thinking of the word prophecy? The numerous fantasy movies featuring bearded, pointy-hat wearing wizards peering through a crystal ball and warning of impending doom? Or documentaries about Nostradamus? Or the now debunked predictions about the world ending in 2012, according to the ancient Mayan clock? Regardless of how prophecy…
The Names of God that Point to One God: “The God of our Fathers”
In the world of theological conversations, the word “God” is the de facto, universal name to describe the supreme Source of Judeo-Christian belief. Yet the etymology of God, just in the Jewish tradition alone, comes from a variety of sources. Further, various names ascribed to God are clearly used in the Torah – which begs…
To Sin or Not to Sin — without the Doctrine of Original Sin
To understand the Jewish interpretation of the flood story and how it differs from Christianity’s overarching doctrine of Original Sin (beginning with Genesis), three components help piece together the Jewish interpretation puzzle: the sources used to build the narrative about sin, the challenges with defining sin in the Jewish sense versus the Christian understanding, and…