New Testament

How Reliable were the Early Church’s Oral Traditions?

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How reliable were the early church’s oral traditions? In terms of assessing the reliability of the Gospels, this is an extremely important question. First century Jewish culture was what scholars today would call an “orally…

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To What Extent is the Old Testament a Sufficient Revelation of God? (podcast)

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Greg considers the relationship between the testaments.  Episode 548 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0548.mp3

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Is the Book of Acts Reliable?

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(Note: We apologize that certain German vowels didn’t translate onto this site). Introduction The book of Acts is of critical importance in the contemporary debate about the historical Jesus. The reason for this is straightforward….

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Jesus Repudiates OT Commands on Oath-Taking: A Response to Paul Copan (#9)

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In his critique of Crucifixion of the Warrior God (CWG), Paul Copan argues that “Boyd pushes too hard to make Jesus’ teaching appear more revolutionary than it really is” [italics original]. Whereas I argue that…

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The Centrality of Christ in Hebrews, Part 2

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The intensely Christocentric reading of the Old Testament that I introduced in the previous post is reflected throughout the book of Hebrews. Here I want to cite two more examples of how this writer saw…

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The Centrality of Christ in Hebrews, Part 1

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The intense Christocentricity that the New Testament writers embrace is nowhere more clearly and consistently illustrated than in the book of Hebrews. Throughout this work we find a repeated emphasis on the many ways the…

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The Old Testament Is NOT on the Same Plane as the New Testament

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Paul taught that unbelievers are blinded by “the god of this age” when they read the OT such that “their minds are made dull” and a “veil covers their hearts…when the old covenant is read”…

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Sermons: Resurrection Principle

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Is the resurrection of Jesus true?  The entire Christian faith rests on if is or not. In this short sermon clip, Greg Boyd goes through a few historical proofs as to why this is true….

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The One True Image of God: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 4

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This point is emphasized throughout the New Testament because, if we don’t get this, we are left to our own imaginations about God, and we’ll draw from a multitude of different sources to construct a…

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The Cruciform Beauty of Horrific Divine Portraits

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“Only a person who is aware of the crucified Christ can properly understand Scripture.” Luther (Table Talks) In the last three posts I’ve been wrestling with how insights from Matthew Bate’s book, The Hermeneutics of…

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The Cross and the Witness of Violent Portraits of God

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In my previous post I noted that the prevalent contemporary evangelical assumption that the only legitimate meaning of a passage of Scripture is the one the author intended is a rather recent, and very secular,…

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Getting Behind the “Letter” of Violent Portraits of God

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“I will do to you what I have never done before… in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents…” Ezek. 5:9-10 In my previous post I offered a brief review…

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How do you explain the violent judgement of Ananias and Sapphira?

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Question: You talk a lot about the violent depictions of God in the Old Testament. But what about God’s slaying of Ananias and Sapphira in the New? How do you explain that? Answer: The same…

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Why Did Jesus Curse The Poor Fig Tree?

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 Why Did Jesus Curse The Fig Tree?  One of the strangest episodes recorded in the Gospels is Jesus cursing a fig tree because he was hungry and it didn’t have any figs (Mk 11:12-14; Mt…

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When Did Jesus Bind the Strongman?

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Question: In Luke 11:21-22 Jesus said: “When a strong man, with all his weapons ready, guards his own house, all his belongings are safe. But when a stronger man attacks him and defeats him, he…

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Gospel “Contradictions” and Orality Studies

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* This essay has been adopted from G. Boyd and Paul Eddy, Lord or Legend? (Baker, 2007). One of the standard tests historians put to ancient documents to assess their veracity is self-consistency. Generally speaking,…

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New Testament Support for the Warfare Worldview

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Warfare in Jesus’ Ministry The theme of God striving to establish his sovereign will (his Kingdom) on earth over and against forces that oppose him is prevalent in the New Testament. In keeping with the…

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Naturalism and the Historical Jesus

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The quest for a “merely human” Jesus The various radical views of Jesus now being advocated by certain scholars and propagated through the press are buttressed by a number of different historical arguments. Some argue,…

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What is the right way to interpret Revelation?

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Few biblical topics have captured the imagination of contemporary evangelicals like the book of Revelation. The recent unprecedented success of the Left Behind series is evidence of this popular fascination. Many evangelicals don’t realize that…

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Twenty Arguments Against Cameron’s “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”

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On March 4th, 2007, the Discovery Channel aired James Cameron’s much celebrated documentary, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” The documentary basically gives a new spin on an old discovery. In 1980, a first century tomb…

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