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Tag Archives: New Testament
Four Hundred Fifty Antisemitic Verses In The Gospels And Book of Acts
Acclaimed Holocaust historian, Daniel Goldhagen, in his most recent book, The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism (Little, Brown & Co. 2013), claims the following about the New Testament: The Christian bible contains four hundred … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged antisemitism, atheism, Bible, God, history, Jesus, New Testament, religion
26 Comments
God, The New Testament, And The Holocaust
It’s very, very hard to speak of God’s existence and of human history going according to a divine plan after the Holocaust. In 1945, Theodore Adorno famously said that it’s absurd to write poetry after the Holocaust, and it seems … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, God, Holocaust, New Testament, philosophy, religion
23 Comments
A Different Kind of Parousia
From Wikipedia: The original Greek version of the New Testament (Novum Testamentum Graece) uses the term parousia (παρουσία from the Greek literal meaning of parousia: divine presence, derived from “para“: beside, beyond, and “ousia“: substance) the “appearance and subsequent presence … Continue reading
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Tagged goddesses, greek, life, longing, love, Mary, New Testament, parousia, romance, the second coming
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Scandal? When American Evangelical Christians Distribute the New Testament to Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, are They Doing Something Wrong?
The following video clip from Al Jazeera is being touted as damning evidence that Evangelicals are abusing their positions, and violating their military missions, distributing copies of the New Testament to Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan: I’m an agnostic, but … Continue reading
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Tagged agnostic, atheist, Bible, Christian, evangelicals, free speech, Islam, Jesus, military, Muslim, New Testament, religion
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Is the Bible an Anthology—or a Unity?
F.F. Bruce, a biblical scholar rather better known in the 1960s than he is today, once said this: [T]he Bible is not an anthology; there is a unity which binds the whole together. Bruce, as an “old school” conservative scholar, has long been … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, Christianity, contradictions in the bible, ff bruce, inerrancy, James Dobson, Jesus, John Macarthur, New Testament, religion
9 Comments
Biblical Scholar, Israel Knohl, is Coming Out with a Book on the Hazon Gabriel Discovery
The book, Messiahs and Resurrection in the Gabriel Revelation, discussing the implications of the recent discovery of an early 1st century BCE tablet that speaks of a Jesus-like resurrected Messiah BEFORE Jesus, is written by a prominent Israeli biblical scholar, Israel Knohl, and when it … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, Bible, Christianity, gospels, Hazon Gabriel, Israel Knohl, Jesus, New Testament, religion, resurrection
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Book Review of “Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation”
Christopher Frilingos’s Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation (University of Pennsylvania Press 2004) is a great academic text about the Book of Revelation, but it is also a fascinating uncovering of Roman cultural curiosities. The author, for example, … Continue reading
How Many People Could the Ancient Colosseum in Rome Hold?
Answer: According to BBC’s website, about 50,000 adult men. Constructed in the 70s CE, the ancient elliptical amphitheatre was originally called the Amphitheatrum Flavium, and was the largest stadium in the Roman Empire. The Book of Revelation, in its imagery and … Continue reading
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Tagged 70 CE, Book of Revelation, Colosseum, history, New Testament, Roman Colosseum, Roman Empire, Rome, Santi Tafarella, Spectacles of Empire, sports, stadiums
162 Comments
Miracles and Reasonable Doubt: Philosopher Stephen Law Weighs in on the Historicity of Jesus
Philosopher Stephen Law recently offered a novel reason for doubting the historicity of Jesus: If two friends tell me that a man called Bert visited them at home last night, I have every reason to believe them. That’s evidence enough. … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, Christianity, doubt, gospels, historicity of Jesus, history, Jesus, New Testament, Santi Tafarella
2 Comments
History, Myth, or Something in Between: Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know about the Genre of the Gospels, But Were Afraid to Ask
When we look at the gospels, an important literary question that immediately confronts us is this: What genre (broadly speaking) are they written in? In other words, are we reading history, myth, or some combination of the two? Obviously, such … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, Bible, Christianity, Jesus, John Macarthur, literature, miracles, mythology, New Testament, philosophy, Santi Tafarella
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Can the New Testament Really Be Read as Literature in the Same Way That We Might Read an Auden Poem as Literature? Are You Sure?
It’s probably a safe bet to say that, in American culture, most of the time, when a person approaches the New Testament it’s for life-direction (“What must I do to be saved?”), or for information (“What does Paul say about … Continue reading
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Tagged Baptist, Bible, Catholic, inerrancy, James Dobson, John Macarthur, literature, New Testament, poetry, Santi Tafarella
3 Comments
Israel Knohl on Hazon Gabriel—The Vision of Gabriel—Qumran Stone Tablet That Seems to Predate Jesus’s Death by a Generation, But Talks about a Suffering and Resurrected Messiah
Israel Knohl, the Biblical scholar whose book, The Messiah Before Jesus (2002), seems to anticipate the discovery of the recent “Gabriel Revelation” stone tablet, has an important essay on the discovery in the Journal of Religion. Knohl calls the tablet Hazon Gabriel (the … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheist, Bible, Christianity, Hazon Gabriel, Israel Knohl, James Dobson, Jesus, literature, New Testament, Santi Tafarella
4 Comments
A Suffering and Resurrected Messiah Before Jesus: Biblical Scholar James Tabor Promotes Israel Knohl’s Text Interpretation of NY Times Reported Stone Tablet
Breaking News: James Tabor, on his blog, promotes Israel Knohl’s interpretation of the “suffering messiah before Jesus” stone tablet. Here’s Professor Tabor’s statement: I recently highlighted the fascinating interpretation of Prof. Israel Knohl of Hebrew University of a new “Dead Sea” … Continue reading
UFO Sightings and Resurrection Sightings: How Templates Function to Structure What We See, and Why the Suffering and Resurrecting Messiah Tablet Discovery Matters
This week’s New York Times bombshell article (which you can read here: https://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/a-suffering-and-resurrected-messiah-before-jesus-bombshell-archeological-find-causes-stir-in-academic-bible-community/ ) on an ancient tablet discovery at the Dead Sea in Jordan that PREDATES Jesus, but that may refer to a suffering messiah who raises from the dead after three days, has the potential to revolutionize … Continue reading
Fraudulant Attribution: Gilgamesh, Moses, the Apostle Matthew—and Ancient Authorship
The Epic of Gilgamesh began perhaps around 2500 BCE as stories told orally, and were not written down until perhaps 1200 BCE. The version we have (discovered by archeologists in Ashurbanipal’s Nineveh library) dates to 700 BCE. Nevertheless, it claims Gilgamesh himself … Continue reading
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Tagged agnostic, apostle, atheist, Bible, Deuteronomy, Epic of Gilgamesh, literature, New Testament, poetry, Santi Tafarella
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