We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Quotes to Chew on: How First Century Jews Came to Worship a Man
“Legends do not generally arise in contradiction to fundamental convictions held by the culture of those who create and embrace them. Yet if the Jesus story is largely a fictitious legend, this is exactly what we must suppose happened. We submit that the initial historical implausibility of this supposition should be enough for us seriously to consider alternative explanations.”
“One such explanation is the one given us by those who first told the Jesus story. It is simple and straightforward, and it explains all that needs to be explained–though it requires that we accept the reality of the supernatural. In essence, the earliest disciples tell us that they report what they do about Jesus (despite its conflict with their own cultural/religious expectations) because this is how things actually happened. Most importantly, they tell us they believe Jesus is the Son of God and worship him as Lord because, though it violates some of their most fundamental Jewish religious convictions to do so, his life, teachings, miracles, and resurrection convinced them.”
Boyd, Gregory A., Lord or Legend? Wrestling with the Jesus Dilemma, Baker Books, 2007, p. 37.
Related Reading
What To Do With the Violent God of the Old Testament
For eight years Greg has been researching for and writing the book entitled The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. In it he confronts the commonly held idea that the Old Testament depictions of God behaving violently should be held alongside of and equal to the God revealed through Jesus dying on the cross. But if the Old Testament…
Does the Doctrine of the Trinity Matter?
Jesus reveals the greatest, most beautiful, and mysterious aspect of God when he, despite being himself God Incarnate, relates to God as his “Father” and refers to God as “the Holy Spirit.” There is, of course, only one God (1 Cor 8:6). Yet Jesus reveals that God somehow exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.…
The Only Thing That Matters Is Love: The Kingdom of God (Part 3)
To say that living in Calvary-quality love is the most important thing in our life is to grossly understate its importance. This stands in distinction from how we typically define the Kingdom of God. But it stands in line with the fact that Jesus is the Kingdom of God. Paul says the “the only thing…
Religion that Blinds Us to God
For a variety of reasons, many Jews at the time of Jesus had come to believe that heaven had been closed since the writing of the last book of the Old Testament. God was distant and no longer active among his people. Their religion focused on holding fast to the law God had given in…
How the Anabaptists Emphasized the Cross
Because the Anabaptists have generally emphasized faith that is evidenced by works and thus on Jesus’ life as an example to be followed, it may prima facia appear that the saving work of the cross was less central to the early Anabaptists than it was to the Reformers and to Evangelicals. In reality, I would argue,…
The Rule of Love
The traditional confession that Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres (“Sacred Scripture is its own interpreter”) presupposes that there is one divine mind behind Scripture, for example. Moreover, Church scholars have traditionally assumed that Scripture’s unity can be discerned in a variety of concepts, motifs, themes and theologies that weave Scripture together. And to speak specifically of the…