The gospel of John refers several times to “the disciple Jesus loved.” But this gospel never tells us exactly who this disciple is. And no other book of the Bible gives us any direct evidence about this disciple’s identity. You’ve probably heard many times that it’s “obvious” that the Beloved Disciple was John the son of Zebedee, one of the Twelve. But many biblical scholars think that it’s not really obvious at all. They’ve suggested a number of other options. The problem is that there isn’t any consensus on this question among scholars. In this blog post, we’ll look at …
Jesus of Nazareth
How We Know Jesus Existed
You might think that everybody at least agrees that Jesus of Nazareth existed. Because we have quite a lot of evidence for that, right? But a surprising number of people in the US actually think Jesus never existed, that he’s all a myth. Let’s be clear that they’re not claiming the resurrection of Jesus is a myth. They claim there wasn’t even a crucifixion of Jesus. They claim there wasn’t a Jesus to crucify. Many of them claim that Nazareth itself wasn’t populated at the time of Jesus. There’s a term for these people. They’re called “Jesus mythicists.” What the …
Jesus and the Third Way of Salvation
In the time of Jesus, his family and friends and countrymen thought there were two main ways to salvation, and they argued about which was the better way. Before we talk about these Two Ways of Salvation, we should first define what we mean by “salvation.” It meant something different two thousand years ago than it does today. If you ask an American Christian in the 21st century what “salvation” means, they’ll tell you that it has to do with going to heaven when you die. And making sure you avoid the other place. But that is not what Jews …
The Five Sons of Mother Mary
According to the gospel of Mark, (see Mark 6:3), Jesus of Nazareth had four brothers and at least two sisters. That raises the question of how, exactly, these siblings were related to Jesus. Over the centuries, people have suggested three theories: They were children of Mary and Joseph. They were children of Joseph by a previous wife. They were cousins of Jesus. I discussed all this in a previous blog post, Mother’s Day With Jesus, so I won’t go over that ground again. My own opinion is that the four “brothers of Jesus” were biological sons of both Mary and …
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews
In my last blog post, Jesus and Palm Sunday, I talked about how Jesus committed sedition by climbing on a donkey and riding down the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem. Every Jew of his time knew the tradition of “Mashiach’s Donkey”—the oracle of the prophet Zechariah about a coming Mashiach (“Messiah” in English) who would someday enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey. They knew many other traditions about Mashiach from oracles in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Micah, and various other prophets: That he would restore the kingdom of his father David. That he would reunite the two tribes of the …
Jesus and Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday celebrates the day Jesus entered Jerusalem in a remarkable procession that sealed his death warrant. Historians don’t agree on the exact year of this extraordinary event. According to the gospel of John, it was a year in which Passover Eve fell on a Friday. Most scholars would put this in either the year AD 33 or AD 30. I think the evidence leans a little toward AD 33, but it wouldn’t shock me if it was AD 30 instead. On that fateful Sunday, Jesus left Jericho in the morning and made the 16-mile climb up the Jericho Road …
Jesus and Valentine’s Day
Nothing seems more ridiculous than to ask whether Jesus celebrated Valentine’s Day. For one thing, Saint Valentine lived about 250 years after Jesus, and the feast honoring him was established in AD 496. For another thing, many people would say that it’s sacrilegious and crazy to think Jesus might have had a wife or a girlfriend. But a surprising number of people think that Jesus was secretly married, and that his wife was Mary Magdalene. It’s worth asking why anyone would think so. It’s rather an old idea, but it became famous in this century with the publication of the …
Jesus and the Bad Samaritans
Say the word “Samaritan” out loud, and most people will think you’re talking about a good guy. Somebody who’d stop to change your tire in the pouring rain. Somebody who’d help you make your rent payment if you were about to get evicted. Somebody who’d rescue a baby from a burning building. The phrase “good Samaritan” is such a part of the English language that it’s easy to forget that it was once a contradiction in terms. When Jesus was alive, his people believed that the only possible kind of Samaritan was a bad Samaritan. Jesus was a good and …
Great Expectations on Baby Jesus
The world we live in is a very different world than the world Jesus of Nazareth was born into. A king ruled over Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. His name was Herod the Great, and he was a savage man who killed his favorite wife because he thought she was cheating on him. He killed three of his sons because he thought they might try to push him off the throne and steal it for themselves. The gospel of Matthew tells a story of how Herod the Great ordered the murders of all the infant sons in Bethlehem under the age …
Thanksgiving With Jesus
Americans have been celebrating Thanksgiving for some hundreds of years now, and it’s easy to assume we invented it. But the basic idea of giving thanks to God for a good harvest is an old idea. In the time of Jesus, all Jews celebrated three different harvest festivals every year: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Now it’s true that each of these festivals was not 100% about the harvest. These festivals commemorated other things too. But each festival included a celebration of the harvest as an essential part. Let’s look at each of these. Passover—Celebrating the Barley Harvest Passover is an …