In The Bible Cause, John Fea explores the American Bible Society (ABS) and the plucky Christians who built and sustained it. Published to coincide with the ABS’s 2016 bicentennial, the book offers a chronological institutional history peppered with quotations from letters written by supporters (and occasionally critics) and tales from agents working across the United States and the globe. At its heart, this book argues that two motivating commitments have driven the history of the ABS. Since its founding in 1816, it has sustained a belief in the power of the Bible to lead people to salvation and has maintained a cultural mandate to build a Christian society in the United States and throughout the world.…
Even though the Italians said the Gothic architecture is “barbaric” and should discontinue the style, surprisingly the style is still being constructed to this day. I chose the St. John the Divine because it has so much similarity to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris. Even though the St. John the Divine is unfinished, it is a very big tourist attraction, just like the Cathedral of Notre Dame. They both have the whole gothic style look, such as the wheel windows, that you notice, almost always, first and stained glass windows. The only difference that is noticeably is how the Cathedral of Notre Dame has a different front look then St. John the Divine.…
The book of John has a narrative Genre. The theme of this book is how God refers to himself as “I am.” The very first verse of the Book says “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1) This book talks about how God is working through Jesus to let everyone know his Word. Through the book of Jesus is working miracles such as turning water to wine for a wedding celebration. Long after when Judas brings the soldiers to arrest Jesus, he is quickly put on trial. Pilate he is the Roman governor, and he had no basis to charge Jesus and tried to release him but eventually gave Jesus to the Jews to be crucified at Golgotha. After his death, 3 days later he resurrects from the Tomb telling Mary Magdalene that God has a…
below the surface of the text resonate with signals from below the surface of the text, allowing the gospel to say more than it otherwise might seem to be saying. Since the gospel’s humor constitutes a form of commentary that is by saying definition implicit, our task is to make some of the humorous explicit, and to consider how the humorous elements function and how they relate to the gospel’s message.” It is not very important about John’s gospel date because “one of the points urged by those who favor a late date is the contention that the manner of referring to the Jews points to a time when they had become enemies of the church.” Perhaps, “throughout this study I argue that John’s gospel with its rhetoric of distance is a text of imperial…
Throughout my readings of Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography by John Crossan, I went in with somewhat low expectations. My reason for this was that the topic of religion, christianity especially was something I did not have too much care for. After finishing the book however, it did enlighten some questions I had on the religion. One answer that came into light when I read the book was concerning the gospels and testaments. I wonder why was there a need to have so many different variants, with minor differences in between them. As I went through the book, it becomes a bit more clear to me, as combining the different perspectives of Christianity will allow for a great combined experience. The second thing that was a bit more clear was on the topic of other great Christian tales such as the tale with Moses and how it relates to Jesus.…
Luke 1:17 gives the commission of John the Baptist as this, “and he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous-to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”…
“Not only is John 's gospel written for evangelism, it seems to be written particularly for Jewish evangelism. From the beginning, the book of John is geared to Jewish thinking. John 1:1 sounds very much like the beginning of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures Taken with the Genesis account that Elohim (God) created the heavens and the earth, the gospel of John reinforces the idea of Messiah as the Creator Himself. Genesis 1:26 records Elohim as saying, "Let Us make man in Our image.…" The Hebrew Elohim is a plural noun. It embodies a sense of composite unity which, seen in the context of the gospel accounts, relates to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit working…
John's certainly living up to all of the fanfare surrounding his birth, but being chosen to alter the cosmic make-up of things for Israel and the entire world is never easy. Complications arise for him when Herod the tetrarch arrests John for being a critic of the administration (3:19-20). They didn't have free speech back then, and it ends up costing John his life (9:7-9). But not before he's achieved his vital purpose of "preparing the way" for Jesus who is the true Messiah (7:18-28; 1:17 and…
Baptism was a healing ritual for Indians and Christians. “Indians understood the baptismal ritual as physically curative. Jesuits similarly expected miraculous recovery to accompany baptism”.vi It is important to remember that John the Baptist baptized Jesus so that He could indentify with sinners. His baptism symbolizes the first “into the righteousness of Christ, dying with Him and rising free from sin in order to walk in the newness of life”vii. It is significant to note that scholars argue over whether or not Jesus actually baptized anyone. Most think that he never did, because our sacrament of baptism commemorates the death and resurrection of…
The most helpful resource that I found whilst translating the first eighteen verses of St. John’s Gospel was also the most detrimental. At some moments, comparing my own translation to others could lead to a better understanding of the overall passage, but it could also become more muddled if the other translator and I had different ideas as to what the original text meant. There were, of course, other times where both the other translations and mine came to the same idea, but worded it differently, which is simply aesthetic. In its totality, St. John’s Gospel was a challenge to translate, through comparing, searching for vocabulary, and tying everything together in a way that didn’t sound like a child wrote it, I was given a deeper understanding…
John’s early life is mostly unknown. We know that he was born around A.D. 3 to Zebedee and Salome. He had an older brother, James, and were together known as the “Sons of Thunder.” They worked in their father’s business as fishers and had some education and were literate. John was a very devout and dedicated Jew and, with James, was a follower of St. John the Baptist. When he was in his mid-twenties, John left John the Baptist to follow Jesus when John the Baptist, after seeing…
The Gospel of John, written by John the Apostle, is unlike from the other three Gospels and covers copious theological contented in respect to the being of Christ and the significance of faith. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are frequently mentioned to as the "Synoptic Gospels" for the objective that of their identical periods and comfortable, and meant at they suggestion a plan of the period of Christ. The Gospel of John twitches not thru Jesus' birth or worldly ministry but then through the action and features of the Son of God previously His becoming man (John 1:14). The Gospel of John highlights the divinity of Christ as is understood in his usage of such expressions as "the Word was God" (John 1:1), "the Savior of the World" (4:42), the "Son…
John to become a priest, he has to undergo a “purification” rite. John’s father tells him to…
Wesley was rarely referred to as John by his family; rather it was “Jack,” or “Jacky,” or “son John.” He had a rather comfortable life, enjoying the typical country parsonage of the time. His home was based on the strict regiment of education, religious activity, and prayer. Education was taken so seriously that a banquet was prepared in the household at the fifth birthday of every child’s ushering into pupilhood. Susanna would literally review a teaching twenty times. When asked why? She would reply, “Because nineteen times were not sufficient. If I had stopped after telling him nineteen times, all my labor would have been lost.” [2] With such a methodistic upbringing, one can only assume why John Welsey would have been the founder of the “Methodists.”…
Starting with Christology one can start to examine the Gospels of John and Mark, where they agree and disagree. Jesus’ proclamation of his Deity resulted in skepticism as seen in John 5:18, “calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God. Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise”. Jesus tries to explain that even though He claims to have God as his Father and Him being equal to God, He is doing what God is calling him to do. He is doing God’s will and spreading the word of God. Similarly in Mark 2:5, when “Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.’ Now some of the scribes were sitting there questioning and wondering, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Another instance of the inquiring and searching that a lot of people had towards Jesus’ teachings. Both John and Mark, depict the adversities He had to deal through his journey on Earth. A similar theme that is seen in both gospels is the way Jesus went about his ‘secret’ mission of spreading His divinity can be seen in Mark 5:40, “He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha come, and immediately the girl got up and began to walk about. At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered…