Herodian dynasty early Christianity
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On the Night He Was Handed Over: The Missing Agent in 1 Corinthians 11:23
Paul mentions the night of the arrest once. In the eleventh chapter of 1 Corinthians, correcting the way the Corinthians conduct their common meal, he recites the tradition of the Lord’s Supper and introduces it with a sentence that uses… Continue reading
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The Fable Beneath the Cross
The Sentence Written Above Him Of everything the gospels say about the death of Jesus, the detail a Roman official would have understood first is the placard. Mark records it in five Greek words, ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων, “the King… Continue reading
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The Name Hidden in Plain Sight: Clopas, Cleopas, and the Family at the Foot of the Cross
The Woman Named by Her Husband A woman stands near the cross in John’s Gospel whose husband’s name has kept a family connection hidden for nineteen centuries in the least private place a text can offer, the Passion account of… Continue reading
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The Rehabilitation of Judas: Why Every Generation Tries to Save the Betrayer
A companion essay to The Twelve Who Were Not: Composite Apostles and the Making of Early Christianity The Disciple Nobody Can Leave Alone The man who handed Jesus over at Gethsemane speaks only a handful of lines in the Gospels,… Continue reading
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The Two Betrayals: Judas and Peter Before the Moral Weight of History
Christianity made one of them a saint and the other a synonym for treachery. A companion essay to The Gospel as Mirror. Two Fates Peter became the rock on which the church was built. Catholic tradition counts him the first… Continue reading
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What Burned in 70 CE Was Not Just a Temple: The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Making of the Apostolic List
A companion essay to The Twelve Who Were Not: Composite Apostles and the Making of Early Christianity The Fire The Temple burned in the late summer of 70, on the tenth day of the month Josephus calls Loüs, the same… Continue reading
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The Rock That Was Never Laid: Apostolic Succession After the Mirror, the Composite, and the Twelve
Three Things That Must Hold Rome’s claim to authority runs through a pair of verses. In Matthew 16:18-19 a Galilean teacher tells a fisherman that he is the rock on which an ekklēsia will be built and gives him the… Continue reading
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The Beloved Disciple’s Secret: Why the Fourth Gospel’s Central Figure Has No Name
A companion essay to The Twelve Who Were Not: Composite Apostles and the Making of Early Christianity The Name John Withholds The Gospel of John names many of its characters with a biographer’s care. Simon is “the son of John”… Continue reading
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Hskr Thskr Hm: What an Eighth-Century Treaty Inscription Tells Us About the Night in Gethsemane
A companion essay to The Twelve Who Were Not: Composite Apostles and the Making of Early Christianity Stones That Outlast Kings Three basalt steles found near the village of Sfire, southeast of Aleppo, record a treaty between two Aramaic kings… Continue reading
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The Age That Named the Wrong Man: Luke 3:23 and the Hermeneutic of Inversion
A companion essay to The Gospel as Mirror The Careful Writer Luke has the strongest reputation for care among the four evangelists, and he earned it in his first sentence. His prologue, a single period of balanced Greek, tells Theophilus… Continue reading
