Tag: Jesus
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The Hebrew prophecy of a virgin birth is based on a mistranslation
Two of the New Testament gospels tell us that Yeshua’s mother was a virgin at the time of his conception and that this had been prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures. About a third of the world’s population choose to believe this. But this particular prophecy was a mistranslation of a passage from the Book of…
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The real Pilate was a ruthless tyrant, not a kindly ditherer
If you’ve seen Michael Palin’s portrayal of Pontius Pilate in Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’, you’ll recall the weak and wavering man with a stutter in awe of his friend Bigus Dickus. Does this in any way resemble reality? No. Not at all. The Pilate of history was a vicious and paranoid tyrant who had…
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Yeshua was wrong!
The writers of the first three (Synoptic) gospels made it perfectly clear – Yeshua/Jesus’ mission was to proclaim the imminent coming of the Kingdom of G_d. Many Christians have never read the gospels in detail. I have, and one fact jumps out at you from almost every page. Once its significance understood, it casts a…
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If we want a rounded picture, we must be look at all available sources
Church theologians say that everything we need to know about Yeshua (‘Jesus’) can be found in the New Testament, and that what is written there is all true. But surely if we want a rounded picture, we must be look at all available sources. That’s not easy; Yeshua barely features in any non-Christian sources from…
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All reported speech in the New Testament is only an interpretation of what was actually said
Not many people realise that the entire New Testament was originally written in Greek – a language that Yeshua and his disciples barely knew (if at all). Their everyday tongue was Galilean Aramaic. They may have understood a smattering of Greek since Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee and just a stone’s throw from Nazareth, was…
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A miracle is an event that cannot be explained
A miracle is any event in the physical world that cannot be explained by the known laws of science and nature. Consequently ‘miracles’ change as scientific knowledge advances. In times gone by mobile phones, microwaves, aeroplanes, television and the internet would have been considered miracles. Even flicking a switch to light up a room would…
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The clergy know, but the faithful don’t want to hear it!
I’ve had many conversations with churchmen and women and discovered that many of them continue to teach the same old things about the Bible without really believing it themselves. They dare not say, though, so for fear of confusing their congregations and losing their employment. One Anglican vicar told me that, like all trainee clergy,…
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Chinese Whispers
Nowadays if you wanted to write a biography of someone who died half a century ago, like Dr Martin Luther King, Sir Winston Churchill or President Kennedy for instance, you would search the internet, visit a library and bookstore and look for film clips and old newsreels. You could even try to make contact with…
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Until the early 19th Century few in the West questioned the Bible’s accuracy
Until the early 19th Century few people in the Christian world questioned the Bible’s accuracy. It was considered sacrosanct. Only when the biblical texts began to be studied seriously in the early 1800s and cross referenced with other sources did a better understanding begin to emerge. As result, most Christians at that time had a…
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Christian Baptism
Did you know there is no mention of infant baptism (Christening) anywhere in the Bible? Yet the early church took it upon themselves to interpret their prophet Yeshua’s message as they saw fit. The purpose of the christening service is, of course, to deliver another generation of youngsters into church membership as parents promise to…