These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. And you shall repeat them diligently to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk on the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 NASB Repeat them diligently – Whether you…
“Now then, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps His covenant and faithfulness, do not let all the hardship seem insignificant before You, which has happened to us, our kings, our leaders, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and to all Your people, from the days of the kings of Assyria to this…
For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under [a]the Law but under grace. Romans 6:14 NASB But – Yesterday we discovered that there is an alternative way of reading this text that preserves Paul’s Jewish orthodoxy. This fact is critically important because it shows us that the Christian assumption that Paul left Judaism and invented…
because God did not make death nor does he delight in the destruction of the living. Wisdom of Salomon 1:13 A New English Translation of the Septuagint Death – It’s fairly widely recognized that The Wisdom of Salomon was composed in Greek in the mid first century B.C.E. It contains many Hellenistic themes, most likely imported…
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you. Matthew 6:33 NASB Kingdom – What does it mean to seek the Kingdom of God? The answer might surprise you because it depends on a shift in paradigms that occurred more than two millennia ago. In the early days of Hellenism,…
Now at this time, as the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint developed on the part of the [b]Hellenistic Jews against the native Hebrews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food. Acts 6:1 NASB Hellenistic Jews – Notice the footnote? Here’s what it says: “Jews who adopted the Gr language and much of Gr culture through acculturation.” In other words, Luke notes…
Exalted be the living God* and praised,. He exists—unbounded by time is His existence.* He is One—and there is no unity like His Oneness. Morning Blessings, ArtScroll Siddur, p. 15 Unbounded by time – The line above is from the morning service in the Jewish Prayer Book. The asterisks in the sentence indicate that there…
If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. Romans 8:10 NASB Dead/alive – If there were ever a verse that makes Paul look like a student of Plato, this is probably it. The apparent dualism between body and spirit, dead and alive,…
to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. Jeremiah 1:2 NASB In the days of – From Moses to Malachi God sent prophets to provide His people with His point of view. But something happened about 2500 years ago. The prophetic…
In the beginning was the word . . . John 1:1 NASB Word – We are not going to go another round on the Trinitarian debate over this verse. What we are going to do is examine how much of the Hellenized world was influenced by the Greek concept of logos. To do that, we…
