Ronnel D. Chua
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Which Church, Exactly: Stephen’s Circle and the Limits of Matthew 16:18
In my post The Church Paul Persecuted Was Not Peter’s, from June 13, 2026, I pointed out something the standard account glides past. When persecution breaks out in Jerusalem after Stephen’s stoning, Acts says the believers scattered through Judea and… Continue reading
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Why Didn’t Anyone Recognize Him?
The oldest manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel end mid-sentence. The women run from the tomb, frightened out of their minds, and say nothing to anyone, for they were afraid (Mark 16:8). That’s it. No appearance of the risen Jesus, no commissioning… Continue reading
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The Damascus Road That Never Happened
Paul’s conversion is the hinge Christian history turns on. His authority, his claim to apostleship, his argument that the gospel came to him directly from God rather than filtering down through a chain of human teachers, all of it traces… Continue reading
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The Church Paul Persecuted Was Not Peter’s
If Peter was the head of the church Paul persecuted, why was Peter the one person left standing when everyone else fled? That’s a question buried inside the standard account of Christian origins that most people never think to ask,… Continue reading
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The Word That Changed Everything
How Paradidōmi Became “Betray” And What The Hebrew Bible Says It Actually Was There is a word in the Greek New Testament that has been mistranslated for two thousand years, and the mistranslation built a villain. The word is paradidōmi.… Continue reading
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WHY MARY IS NOT HIS MOTHER: The Woman at Cana and the Woman at the Cross
Woman, Never Mother: The Address John Never Explains There is a detail in the Gospel of John so consistent, so deliberate, and so stubbornly resistant to the explanation two thousand years of commentary has offered for it, that its consistency… Continue reading
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CHUZA’S CHOICE: The Parable Behind the Parable
Luke mentions Joanna almost in passing. She appears in a list of women who traveled with Jesus and supported his movement financially, tucked between Mary Magdalene and a woman named Susanna: “Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager” (Luke… Continue reading
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The Kiss That Cannot Exist
The Gospel Of Judas And The Theology Of Disappearance Mark gives the kiss without apology. Judas arrives in Gethsemane leading the arresting party, approaches Jesus directly, and executes what he has arranged. “Now the betrayer had given them a sign,… Continue reading
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The Conjunction That Should Not Be There
Jesus Christ and Him Crucified: A Redundancy That Was Never an Accident A three-word phrase in Paul’s first letter to Corinth has stayed in view for two thousand years without anyone asking the one question that actually unlocks it. Scholars… Continue reading
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THE THEOLOGY OF SILENCE
How Paul Translated the Politically Dangerous Into the Theologically Universal There is a common misreading of Paul’s letters that has been absorbed so thoroughly into the tradition that it no longer looks like a misreading. It looks like common sense.… Continue reading
