by Ben Witherington in Patheos.com—

There is an awful lot of loose talk and pontificating on the basis of loose talk when it comes to the issue of Jesus’ social level, and his ability to read or write, or whether he could have been multi-lingual. Sometimes the discussion is even based on irrelevant data— for example the fact that Galilee was not inhabited by scads of Gentiles (see Mark Chancey’s fine monograph on how Gentile was Galilee). The ethnic makeup of Galilee is frankly irrelevant to the issue of whether Greek was used in the first century in Galilee or not for the very good reason that all of the Holy Land had long since been Hellenized for centuries.

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by Zenon Sommers—

The gospel of Mark tells of a man named Jesus who spends a year preaching love, sacrifice, and repentance to others and to God. The focus of Jesus’ message is the coming of the kingdom of God, a time on earth where God would reign over all and the oppression of the Jews would end. What Jesus does not tell the world is that he is the Messiah, God’s anointed one, sent to bring God’s kingdom to earth. Whenever someone realizes Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus immediately moves to silence them. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus concealed his identity as the Messiah because his mission and message ran counter to everything the Jewish people expected from a Messiah.

*Zenon is a sophomore psychology student at UM Dearborn.

by Marty Smithhart—

When I became a Christian in my 30s, one of the questions I used to ask myself was, "Is the Bible really that confusing? There is no doubt that there are all kinds of views on Christianity, who God is, Islam’s view of God (Allah) and Judaism’s view of Hashem, etc. One thing that really captivated me when I first began to compare and contrast Christianity (the scriptures) with modern Judaism is this point: The scriptures, both Old and New Testament, were written before the Talmudic sages wrote. The Christian texts were written before Talmudic Judaism began codification. Therefore, if you want to know what the Bible says from its earliest point of view, before Talmudic Judaism and its sages, you must use the Christian New Testament. 

by Shane Rife—