Like many holidays, Valentine’s Day is arrayed with a myriad of stories and legends.* Several St. Valentines did live in the early centuries of the church. One set of stories tells of Valentine’s arrest under the Roman Emperor Claudius who tried to persuade Valentine to renounce Christianity and take up Roman pagan religion. Valentine did [...]
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in Jesus on Jan 6th, 2010
The Epiphany Story
Matthew 2:1-12 (The Message)
1-2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem village, Judah territory— this was during Herod’s kingship—a band of scholars arrived in Jerusalem from the East. They asked around, “Where can we find and pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews? We observed a star in the eastern sky that [...]
Popularity: 2% [?]
The politically correct framework around the birth story of Jesus is that Joseph and Mary were homeless. Well, this is patently and politically incorrect.
Joseph, because of an imperial decree for more taxes, had to travel from his home in Nazareth to Bethlehem to register for the tax census. Joseph had a job. He was a [...]
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in Culture, Jesus, Ministry, Reviews on Dec 15th, 2009
This will be our final reflection on Ben F. Meyer’s The Aims of Jesus, covering chapters VIII and IX. Again, I admit that this is a challenging book to comprehend, but well worth the effort. In these chapters I see the influence of Ben Meyer on N.T. Wright.
I heard New Testament scholar Dr. Scot McKnight [...]
Popularity: 2% [?]
Posted in Culture, Jesus, Ministry, Theology on Dec 10th, 2009
Worth the price of the book: chapter VII of Ben F Meyer’s The Aims of Jesus.
Meyer discerns from Jesus’ proclamation (of the kingdom of God) and his public actions that Jesus worked toward “a stunningly unexpected restoration of Israel” (173).
While there is much in chapter 7, I want to focus on Jesus’ habit of “table [...]
Popularity: 2% [?]
The other day I saw a TV commercial for Andrea Bocelli’s new CD of Christmas songs titled “my Christmas.” Andrea Bocelli, whom Oprah adores, is a fantastic Italian singer. In the ad he was singing “Ave, Maria” and I felt a little guilty for really liking it. Why? Can a good Protestant really enjoy “Ave, [...]
Popularity: 1% [?]
