Associate Professor of New Testament, Tyndale Seminary
Note: This portrait of Lydia is fictional, although it is based on the realities of ancient city life and depicts experiences that would have been common. Unlike most of my fictional portraits, this one uses the name of a real figure we know from Paul’s letter. The details of her story, though, are from my…
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The Crisis: Torah and the Gentiles In many ways, Paul’s letter to the Romans has shaped contemporary Christianity more than any other book in the New Testament. It was in his reading of this letter, along with Galatians, that Martin Luther first glimpsed a message of grace, of God’s free gift to human beings, that…
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More than any other single figure in the first century, it is Paul of Tarsus who has shaped our understanding of Christ. This is not to say that Paul’s ideas were unique, or that he invented them all. Quite the opposite. Most of what Paul says would have drawn nods of agreement from Peter, John,…
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Krates spends his days under the Stoa of Attalos, in the shade of the broad porch. As the morning bustle gives way to the languid pace of the afternoon, he and a few others sit on the flagstones at the feet of their teacher Teles. There are more famous Stoic philosophers in Athens, but his…
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Patroclus’ family has called Ephesus home for more generations than they can remember. His life had been lived almost entirely in the shadow between the two ancient hills, Panayir Dagh and B’lb’l Dagh. His days and weeks and years had been spent within the strong embrace of the great Lysimachian Walls, which had yet to…
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We do not know much about Luke’s patron, Theophilus, but we can easily imagine the kind of person he might have been. Perhaps his home was Alexandria, the pearl of Hellenistic culture at the mouth of the Nile, chief city of Roman Egypt. On this morning Theophilus left his city house early and rode out…
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A Cosmic Mission Much like Matthew, Luke too emphasizes that the non-Jewish nations are now being invited to participate in the re-established reign of God. Luke places Jesus’ genealogy at the transition from the infancy narrative to the account of Jesus’ adult career. So it is significant that Luke traces the Messiah’s ancestry all the…
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God’s New People More than the other Gospels, Matthew is focused in large part on the life of the Christian community. It is only in Matthew that the word “church” (ekklesia, ἐκκλησία) appears on Jesus’ lips as a term for his circle of disciples (Matt 16:18; 18:17). This has seemed unlikely to many historians, who…
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A Faithful Scribe in the Kingdom As we approach the Gospel of Matthew, let us imagine that we are there in the room with the book’s author. His back is turned to us, so we cannot yet see his face. He is seated on a low writing bench, the fresh papyrus roll balanced on his…
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The Gospel Plot When we read any book of the New Testament it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. We are often used to hearing or reading short snippets in isolation. What we can overlook, when we read it this way, is that Mark gives his account of Jesus’ mission a clear…
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