For the past eight weeks, I have been reading the four Gospels for class. Alongside these readings, I have been studying the different forms of “criticism” that many have used in past decades, and also centuries, to try and find the “Jesus of history” as opposed to the “Jesus of faith.” While proper interpretation of…

When reading the Gospels, it could be easy to forget why they were written. While the Matthew and Mark do not state a purpose, and Luke states that he is mainly writing for Theophilus, the Gospel According to John gives a general purpose statement. It can be found in John 20:30-31 and it is this,…

In Mark 8:22-26, we are told of an instance where Jesus heals a blind man. The interesting thing is that Jesus has to touch the man twice before he is fully healed. We read “spitting on his eyes and laying His hands on him, He asked him, ‘Do you see anything?’ He looked up and…

    One thing that I believe many people forget about Jesus is that He was a Jew, and an Old Testament Jew at that. He often quoted the Old Testament, normally to point out where people had gone wrong in their thinking. One example of this can be found in Matthew 15:1-9. The Pharisees and scribes…

    This will be a look at the parable of the sower by reading “horizontally.” By that I mean looking at what each of the accounts has to say. There is another method, known as reading “vertically,” where you read what was happening before and after the passage as well and try to get a deeper…