Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1185. What is the book of Jasher mentioned in Joshua and 2 Samuel, and should its brief, tantalising appearances in Scripture make us curious about a lost inspired text? The book of Jasher is referenced twice in the Old Testament, in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18, as a source the biblical writers themselves…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1186. What is the Gospel of Thomas, and why does it keep surfacing in popular articles and documentaries about the “hidden” or “suppressed” gospels? The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, discovered among the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt in 1945, and it has become, in certain circles, a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1187. Read Matthew, Mark and Luke one after another and you soon notice they are telling one connected story, which is exactly why scholars group them together as the Synoptic Gospels. Turn the page to John and the atmosphere changes: the parables thin out, long personal conversations take their place, and the pace slows…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1164. Interpreting biblical prophecy rightly is, I think, one of the more neglected disciplines in the church today, and one of the most abused outside it. Whole sections of the Old Testament, most of the Gospels’ final discourses, and the entire book of Revelation are prophetic material, and yet many believers approach these pages…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1205. The Greek of Revelation has puzzled and occasionally embarrassed readers since the earliest centuries of the church, because John writes sentences that any first year Greek student would be marked down for. Cases fail to agree, participles hang without a clear subject, and in one notorious verse a preposition governs a nominative instead…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1204. The faith once delivered to the saints is the phrase Jude reaches for when he explains why his short, urgent letter changed direction partway through the opening line. He had wanted to write about their common salvation, but found it necessary instead to appeal to his readers to contend for this same faith….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1203. Inspiration and illumination are two words that get used almost interchangeably in casual church conversation, and the blur causes real confusion. People will say a sermon was inspired when they mean it moved them, or that the Spirit inspired their understanding of a verse when they mean he illuminated it. Scripture actually keeps…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1200. Some of the most commonly misinterpreted verses in the whole Bible are also some of the most quoted, which is exactly why the confusion spreads so widely. A phrase gets lifted out of its setting, repeated in a sermon illustration or a social media post, and eventually acquires a popular meaning that the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1197. The authorship of Hebrews is the oldest literary puzzle in the New Testament, and honesty requires me to say at the outset that nobody can answer it with certainty. The book itself is anonymous. Unlike Paul’s letters, which open by naming their author, Hebrews simply begins with a majestic statement about God speaking…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1183. Is the book of Esdras a book we should read, and does it belong anywhere near our study of Scripture? People find the name confusing before they even reach the content, since several ancient books share it, and I want to sort out both the confusion and the underlying canonical question clearly. The…