New Testament
How Reliable were the Early Church’s Oral Traditions?
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, New Testament
Topics: Biblical Reliability
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…
To What Extent is the Old Testament a Sufficient Revelation of God? (podcast)
Category: ReKnew Podcast
Tags: Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, New Testament, Old Testament
Greg considers the relationship between the testaments. Episode 548 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0548.mp3
Is the Book of Acts Reliable?
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Bible, Essay, New Testament
Topics: Biblical Reliability
(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….
Jesus Repudiates OT Commands on Oath-Taking: A Response to Paul Copan (#9)
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
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…
The Centrality of Christ in Hebrews, Part 2
Category: General
Tags: Bible Interpretation, Christocentrism, Cruciform Theology, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Christology
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…
The Centrality of Christ in Hebrews, Part 1
Category: General
Tags: Bible Interpretation, Christocentrism, Cruciform Theology, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Christology
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…
The Old Testament Is NOT on the Same Plane as the New Testament
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Cruciform Theology, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Biblical Interpretation
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”…
Sermons: Resurrection Principle
Category: Sermons and Video Clips
Tags: Apologetics, Bible, Jesus, New Testament, Sermons
Topics: Apologetics
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….
The One True Image of God: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 4
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Essay, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament, Prayer, The Image of God
Topics: Apologetics, Christology
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…
The Cruciform Beauty of Horrific Divine Portraits
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, God, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
“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…
The Cross and the Witness of Violent Portraits of God
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Bible Interpretation, Cruciform Theology, Essay, Jesus, New Testament, Old Testament
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
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,…
Getting Behind the “Letter” of Violent Portraits of God
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Character of God, Cruciform Theology, Essay, Hermeneutics, Jesus, Matthew Bates, New Testament, Non-Violence, Old Testament, Reformed Theology, Scripture, Violence
Topics: Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
“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…
How do you explain the violent judgement of Ananias and Sapphira?
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, Judgement, New Testament
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…
Why Did Jesus Curse The Poor Fig Tree?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bible, Jesus, New Testament, Q&A
Topics: Enemy-Loving Non-Violence
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…
When Did Jesus Bind the Strongman?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bible, New Testament, Q&A
Topics: Atonement and The Cross, Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
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…
Gospel “Contradictions” and Orality Studies
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Bible, Essay, Gospels, Jesus, New Testament
Topics: Biblical Reliability
* 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,…
New Testament Support for the Warfare Worldview
Category: Essays
Tags: Bible, Essay, New Testament, Spiritual Warfare, Warfare Worldview
Topics: Spiritual Warfare, Cosmic Conflict
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…
Naturalism and the Historical Jesus
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Gospels, Jesus, New Testament
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
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,…
What is the right way to interpret Revelation?
Category: Q&A
Tags: Bible, End Times, New Testament, Q&A, Revelation
Topics: Biblical Interpretation, End Times
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…
Twenty Arguments Against Cameron’s “The Lost Tomb of Jesus”
Category: Essays
Tags: Apologetics, Essay, Gospels, Jesus, New Testament
Topics: Jesus: Lord or Legend
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…