Six days a week, from sunup to sundown, Jesus would have toiled in the royal city, building palatial houses for the Jewish aristocracy during the day, returning to his crumbling mud-brick home at nigh...
Simply put, the infancy narratives in the gospels are not historical accounts, nor were they meant to be read as such. They are theological affirmations of Jesus’s status as the anointed of God. The d...
RELIGIONS BECOME INSTITUTIONS when the myths and rituals that once shaped their sacred histories are transformed into authoritative models of orthodoxy (the correct interpretation of myths) and orthop...
One day, while he was idly reciting his verses to a captive audience, a scrap of paper, borne by the wind, landed on his lap. On it were written two words: Layla and Majnun. As the crowd watched, Majn...
Muhammad may have been, there is one detail that should not be lost in the tumult and confusion
Modalist Christians conceived of the Trinity as representing God in three successive modes of being: first as the Father, then as the Son, and finally and forevermore as the Holy Spirit.
Mark’s focus is kept squarely on Jesus’s ministry; he is uninterested either in Jesus’s birth or, perhaps surprisingly, in Jesus’s resurrection, as he writes nothing at all about either event.
In the Ummah, there was no tradition of veiling until around 627 C.E., when the so-called verse of hijab suddenly descended upon the community. That verse, however, was addressed not to women in gener...
In other words, according to Jesus, Caesar is entitled to be given back the denarius coin, not because he deserves tribute, but because it is his coin: his name and picture are stamped on it.
However, Saudi Arabia quickly discovered what the rest of the world would soon learn. Fundamentalism, in all religious traditions, is impervious to suppression. The more one tries to squelch it, the s...
Herod was not just the emperor’s client-king. He was a close and personal friend, a loyal citizen of the Republic who wanted more than to emulate Rome; he wanted to remake it in the sands of Judea. He...
Herod did a masterful job of maintaining order on behalf of Rome. His reign ushered in an era of political stability among the Jews that had not been seen for centuries. He initiated a monumental buil...
Ezekiel declared, in the center of all nations
Despite the common perception in the West, the Muslim conquerors did not force conversion upon the conquered peoples; indeed, they did not even encourage it. The fact is that the financial and social...
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 contemporafirst is from the Princeto...
Consider this: Crucifixion was a punishment that Rome reserved almost exclusively for the crime of sedition. The plaque the Romans placed above Jesus’s head as he writhed in pain—King of the Jews—was...
Actually, Paul sometimes directly contradicts Jesus. Compare what Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans—everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13)—to what Jesus says...
A similar lack of concern about Jesus’s earthly origins can be found in the first gospel, Mark, written just after 70 C.E. Mark’s focus is kept squarely on Jesus’s ministry; he is uninterested either...
The gospel writers for whom history was not a matter of uncovering facts, but of revealing truths.
Como «los principales sacerdotes y los ancianos», o «los escribas y fariseos», en el siglo I en Palestina eran grupos distintos y separados, y Jesús mantenía relaciones diferentes con cada uno de ello...