Category: Christianity
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People don’t like inconvenient facts getting in the way!
A Brummie friend told me about his upbringing. ‘If I’d been born in Pakistan,’ he said, ‘I’d be a Muslim. If I were from Israel, I’d be a Jew, if from Italy, I’d be a Catholic. When you’re from my part of Birmingham, you’re an Aston Villa supporter. It doesn’t occur to you to be…
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St. Paul’s Conversion: Who do we believe?
One of the most interesting things about the New Testament book, Acts of the Apostles, is that it offers us the opportunity to compare its version of events surrounding Paul of Tarsus with the versions that appear in Paul’s letters. What do we find? That the Acts account is embellished in every case where an…
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All reported speech in the New Testament is only an interpretation of what was actually said
The entire New Testament was originally written in Greek – a language that Jesus/Yeshua and his disciples barely knew. Their everyday tongue was Galilean Aramaic, now defunct. Yeshua may have understood a smattering of marketplace Greek since Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee and just a stone’s throw from Nazareth, was on the main trade route…
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Explain this to a 6 year-old!
Professor Albert Einstein said that if you can’t explain something to a six year-old, you don’t understand it yourself. So here are six things you can ask your Christian friends and colleagues: How does the execution of a Jewish prophet and healer nearly two thousand years ago save me or you from the consequences of…
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The world is run by a family of giant lizards
As a child, my Methodist parents paid lip service to respecting others’ beliefs as long as they didn’t conflict with their own. I was to respect other people’s tastes, political opinions and allegiances, but they also warned me to be suspicious of the Catholic family living next door, the Spiritualists across the road, men with…
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Holiness was equated with purity in 1st Century Jewish society
In the 1st Century BCE, holiness in Jewish society was equated with cleanliness and governed by the Purity Laws. They dated back to the Torah written hundreds of years before. These are the basis of Christian morality because they were the basis of Yeshua’s morality. Among the 613 strictures of the Torah were: To circumcise…
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The First Gospel
‘Mark’ was the first of the four official gospels to be written, around 70 CE. Only the seven authentic letters of Paul and the anonymous letter to the Hebrews were written before this, which means ninety percent plus of the New Testament was written after. Nobody knows who wrote it, but it is clear the…
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Truth and Trinity
Most Christian denominations teach that the essence of G_d exists in three forms, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father is as described in the Hebrew Scriptures – creator, omnipotent power, friend and judge; the Son, Yeshua, was sent to Earth in human form to redeem humanity; and the Holy Spirit is the means…
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38,000 Versions of the ‘Truth’?
The first problem in trying to understand what Christianity teaches is to decide which form of Christianity! There are no less than 38,000 different denominations – and that’s a conservative estimate. The exact number is hard to determine; after all, what counts as a denomination? Most coexist harmoniously, but some violently disagree with each other.…
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‘Jesus’ wasn’t called ‘Jesus’
The first and most obvious historical fact about the main character of the New Testament gospels is that he wasn’t called ‘Jesus’. To some, this is an obvious point, to others it comes as a surprise; some acknowledge it but think it doesn’t matter. But it does, because it illustrates the way in which the…