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This week Jay Smith and I discuss the content from Acts 1-4: Pentecost, Holy Spirit power and ability, and the amazing reality of the earliest Christian communities.
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Here is a quick translation that I did of Mark chapter 3:
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These are thoughts from success and failure in my own reading goals over the past 30+ years , as well as insights from sharing the journey with others.
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Joan Taylor has written a really good post over at ASOR’s Ancient Near East Today website discussing the issue what Jesus may have looked like. She first discusses the issue that most of our contemporary and iconic images of Jesus date from the Byzantine period or later, beginning some 300 years after Jesus and reflecting more the images and ideals of periods and cultures different from that of Jesus:
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Following up on the post I shared yesterday highlighting the article “Children in the ancient Middle East were valued and vulnerable — not unlike children today” by Shawn Flynn and Kristine Garroway, here is another article, this one in HaAretz, by Nir Hassan highlighting the work of Rona Avissar Lewis.
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Shawn Flynn, St. Joseph’s College, and Kristine Garroway, Hebrew Union College, have a nice article over at theconversation.com on children and families in the Ancient Near East. It provides some brief introductory insights. The article is entitled: “Children in the ancient Middle East were valued and vulnerable — not unlike children today“
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Though there is no doubt that crucifixion, well attested in literature, was a form of torture and execution in the Roman Empire (and other cultures); however, there is almost no evidence, in terms of physical human remains, of the practice. Forbes has an article (using information from an article in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences) which highlights the discovery of only the second set of human remains bearing the marks of crucifixion. This discovery was made in Italy. Previously, the only other remains had been found outside of Jerusalem in 1968, in an ossuary bearing the name: Yehohanon ben Hagkol.
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My good friend, Ben Freeman, and I sat down again and recorded the second episode of the Out of Context podcast. Again, it was a blast (and, again, Ben did all the work).
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Dr. Christopher Rollston is working on translating ostraca inscriptions found at Machaerus. Machaerus is the site where, according to tradition, John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded under the reign of Herod Antipas. The location is in Jordan. Read a tiny bit more about Machaerus, the ostraca, and the work at the George Washington University link.
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Tonight (Nov 6, 2019) NOVA will broadcast and stream “Dead Sea Scroll Detectives“.
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Viewable online at the British Library is a fragmentary codex of Exodus (containing Exodus 1:1-8:5 in 21 folios, including covers) with Hebrew transliterated into Arabic, but with traditional Hebrew vowel points. The work is incredible and beautiful and dates from the 10th century. It was purchased from an antiquities dealer in Jerusalem in the 19th century.
Here’s a summary of the contents from the British Library:
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My good friend, Ben Freeman, and I sat down and recorded some of our conversations for a podcast. It was a blast (and Ben did all the work). In this first episode we cover a bit of our history and a wide range of topics, some of which are sparked by Ben’s question of whether dogs have souls.