Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but the sword. MATTHEW 10:34
Despite two millennia of Christian apologetics, the fact is that belief in a dying and rising messiah simply did not exist in Judaism.
But perhaps the most important innovation in the doctrine of jihad was its outright prohibition of all but strictly defensive wars. Fight in the way of God those who fight you, the Quran says, but do...
Because the concept of the Trinity is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament (the term was coined by one of the oldest and most formidable church fathers, Tertullian of Carthage, early in the t...
As noted, naming a book after someone significant was a common way of honoring that person and reflecting his views.
The relationship between the Jews and pagan Arabs was symbiotic in that not only were the Jews heavily Arabized, but the Arabs were also significantly influenced by Jewish beliefs and practices.
The bandits tapped into the widespread apocalyptic expectation that had gripped the Jews of Palestine in the wake of the Roman invasion.
Los judíos incluso estaban exentos de rendir culto directo al emperador, algo que Roma imponía prácticamente a cualquier otra comunidad religiosa bajo su dominio. Todo
Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
It is difficult to place Jesus of Nazareth squarely within any of the known religiopolitical movements of his time. He was a man of profound contradictions, one day preaching a message of racial exclu...
Faith is a choice; anyone who says otherwise is trying to convert you.
During Jesus’s lifetime, zealotry did not signify a firm sectarian designation or political party. It was an idea, an aspiration, a model of piety inextricably linked to the widespread sense of apocal...
Consider, for example, how the following verse (4:34) regarding the obligations of men toward women has been rendered into English by two different but widely read contemporary translators of the Qura...
Athena was originally worshiped as a flat piece of olive wood that was washed and bejeweled, wrapped in garments, and carefully tended by a cadre of her priestesses.16
As Jesus’s ministry expanded, becoming ever more urgent and confrontational, his words and actions would increasingly reflect a deep antagonism toward the high priest and the Judean religious establis...