Tag: NewTestament

Is John’s Gospel anti-Jewish?

As Christians, when we read John’s Gospel, we do come across some passages in which the language about “the Jews” does, and should, make us uncomfortable. And there is no question that the history of European ‘Christendom’ down the centuries is littered with horrific examples of hostility towards, and persecution of, Europe’s Jews. This unsavoury

Why I Am A Christian (#3): The Diversity of New Testament Voices

[<<] [Contents] [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [>>] The Christian faith is not infrequently derided as irrational, delusional, fairyland. Though such arguments are sometimes made in an intellectually vigorous manner, I would argue that at least as often

Why I Am A Christian (#1): The Gospels as Eyewitness Accounts

[Contents] [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] [Part 11] [>>] The Christian faith is not infrequently derided as irrational, delusional, fairyland. Though such arguments are sometimes made in an intellectually vigorous manner, I would argue that at least as often such

When did the Bible become the Bible? — Part #1 (The New Testament)

[Part 1. New Testament] [Part 2. Old Testament] A friend once asked me, “When did the Bible become the Bible?” Although that is a question with a fairly well-understood answer historically, it’s not a simple, straightforward answer to relate; it’s one that, to be properly understood, requires some time to explain (and I told him

The Canon of Scripture defined in two early(ish) statements

One of the Christian historical questions about which there is a great deal of misunderstanding and misinformation is when the New Testament became the New Testament. In other words, when did the 27 individual books get collected together into what we now know as ‘the New Testament’? I will write about this in a subsequent

Ignatius of Antioch’s New Testament

It is sometimes falsely claimed that the Church arbitrarily selected the 27 books of the New Testament in the fourth century. While it is true that the 27 books of our New Testament were not formally recognized as ‘the New Testament’ until near the end of the fourth century, and our earliest canon list containing