Search Results (19)

Some studies have pointed to the Jewish background of the prayer that, according to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus taught his disciples. However, the formulations of LP’s words do not necessarily presuppose the conclusion of the formation of Jewish prayers and do not necessarily presuppose a unidirectional influence of Jewish prayers on the formation of LP. This prayer and its “midrash” in John 17 may have influenced the formulation and final formation of some Jewish prayers. The differences between these prayers may indicate the mutual influence that, in some cases, took place throughout the history of their formation. This reciprocity may be due to the intention to establish and define the differences between the religious groups of Judaic origin that inherited these prayers and between the communities that recited them. The crystallization of biblical themes in these prayers highlights the common heritage of these groups and a different understanding of the fulfilment of God’s word in relation to the coming of his kingdom. While this process, characterized by a conflict of interpretations, took place “within Judaism,” it also led to the parting of the ways of Judeo-Christians from the Synagogue. Full article

This article investigates Jesus’s identity in the Synoptic Gospels by examining the Gospels’ literary features. I take a narrative approach to determine how the evangelists, in unique and shared ways, reveal to their audiences who Jesus is. Certain literary features in the evangelists’ texts provide an answer to Jesus’s question, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:15; Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20). For Mark, Jesus is “Christ” and “Son of God” (Mark 1:1); as the plot unfolds, these terms become guideposts suggesting that characters in the Gospel (and by extension the audience, too) come to a deeper understanding of who Jesus is. For Matthew, the good news of Jesus commences with the relationship between Jesus and Israel’s past through figures like David and Abraham. By observing how Matthew characterizes Jesus in the Gospel, the audience learns that Jesus stands in continuity with Israel. Finally, Luke starts his account with a focus not on figures from Israel’s history, but rather on its institutions, like the temple and the priesthood (see Luke 1:5, 9). Luke’s audience learns who Jesus is by paying attention to Luke’s use of settings and themes. Thus, the particular literary artistry of each synoptic evangelist provides a way for a contemporary audience to know Jesus. Full article

The legend of the old man Simeon, who received Jesus in his arms and was one of the Septuagint translators, is almost unknown in Western Christianity but is very popular today among Orthodox Christians. The version circulating in Orthodox churches is based on the account in Demetrius of Rostov’s Lives of the Saints. The article explores the occurrences of the legend in modern, medieval Slavonic, Byzantine, and oriental writings and attempts to identify the stages of the transmission of the legend from antiquity to modern times. The historical analysis and the comparison of the motifs found in these writings make the hypothesis of a Byzantine archetype of the legend plausible. This writing has been lost, but it was previously translated into Syriac, Arabic, and Slavonic, contributing to the spread of the legend in Eastern and Slavic Christianity. The legend builds on the identification of Simeon in Luke’s Gospel with Shimʿon ha-Tsaddiq. It interprets Luke 2:26 by constructing a pre-history of the episode that places Simeon into the time of the Septuagint translation. The miracle of prolonging Righteous Simeon’s life functions as a reconfirmation of the fundamental character of Isaiah 7:14 for Christianity. Full article

How did early 19th Century Māori assess the authenticity of the gospel narrative based on their own traditional worldview? This essay explores the thoughts of Whangataua, an ancestor of the author from the Ngāi Tahu and Rangitāne tribes of the upper Manawatū River region in the North Island of New Zealand. How might Whangataua and his contemporaries have negotiated the authenticity of the gospel narrative shared by the missionary William Colenso between 1846 and 1852? This paper explores the cultural and intellectual negotiation that took place when Māori first heard the gospel message by comparing the story of the virgin birth of Jesus from the book of Luke with the traditional narrative of Tamatea-ure-haea and his wife Iwipupu. The intersection between the virgin conception narrative and Māori tribal beliefs held by 19th Century rangatira (principal chiefs) reveals an overlapping of realities where Māori worldview could become an agent of divine accommodation and authenticity for the gospel narratives. Full article

Luke’s Eucharistic pattern not only serves as a Christological marker, but formative pattern for Christian faith communities. In this article, I appeal to Luke’s Eucharistic pattern to advance the claim that hospitable Eucharistic table practices are not only consistent with Luke’s Christology but also form faith that is capable of confronting and dismantling psychological disgust responses to outsiders. This motif is expanded in Luke–Acts, where acts of table fellowship become the places where socio-moral barriers are transgressed, signaling the good news of the gospel, especially for Gentiles. Drawing from biblical scholarship as well as recent work in psychology, I will advance the claim that hospitable Eucharistic practices not only expose disgust psychology in the faith formation of persons but also act as a potential balm, forming persons according to the good news proclaimed in Luke–Acts. Full article

The Torah is central to Judaism. Jesus’s relationship with it sparks conflict with Christianity. Some Jews think that Jesus violated the Torah, while some Christians believe that he sinlessly followed it. This clash escalated on 22 June 2023, when Ultra-Orthodox Jews protested a Messianic convention in Jerusalem. Social media videos and comments highlighted Jesus’s purported Torah compliance, placing Matthew 5:17 at the center stage. The comments proved indicative of the gaps within the literature as neither determined all the unique Written and Oral Torahic/legal issues raised within the Gospels nor quantified the extent of Jesus’s compliance. To address these gaps, this study employs artificial intelligence (LDA), statistics, and legal analysis and exegesis to determine Jesus’s compliance with the Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, and Mishneh Torah. The findings show the Gospels’ consensus: Mark, Luke, and John reflect that Jesus was non-Torah-compliant (14.80, 43.80, and 0.00%, respectively); Matthew states otherwise (70.80%). Overall, the study revealed that Jesus kept 79 of 162 Written and Oral Torah laws (48.80%). This study has significant implications for Christian doctrines, the definition(s) of sin, and the missionizing ethnoreligion members and serves as a case study that illustrates AI’s impact on religious authority (i.e., clergy, scholarship, and doctrines). Full article

This article carefully examines the meaning of servant leadership as embedded in Luke 22:23–27. We believe that servant leadership as taught by the Lukan Jesus is an ideal leadership style suitable for anyone who aspires for any leadership position. To examine this topic, this article adopts subversive rhetoric to interpret the text in Luke 22:23–27 to understand the embedded ideology within the text. The application of subversive rhetoric and ideology in reading Luke 22:23–27 provides insights into the leadership problems faced in Christian community today. Using subversive rhetoric and ideology as a means of interpretation, this article emphasises that the Lukan text is an invitation to the Christian community to model their leadership style based on the premise of the Lukan Jesus since leadership is the centre of every good governance. The Lukan Jesus instructed his followers not to follow the empire’s leadership style of ruling over people without caring for their wellbeing. However, the article acknowledges that the disciples were instructed to subversively change the leadership style and implement the one that would be of benefit to the entire humanity—the servant leadership model. It concludes that the Luke text aims at introducing a servant leadership system that was against the Roman Empire for the new Lukan community and invites the present Christian community and world leaders to imbibe the ideology of servant leadership style as introduced by the Lukan Jesus and practised by Nelson Mandela. Full article

The paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders as presented in three distinct sources: the seventh-century Dunhuang manuscript Yishen Lun (Discourse on God), the sixth-century rabbinic text Avot D’Rabbi Nathan, and the Gospels (Matthew and Luke) of the Christian Bible. It explores the imagery used, piety taught, and worldviews conveyed in these renditions, concluding that the version in Yishen Lun shares a closer resemblance with the one in rabbinic literature than with the Gospels. This discovery, in conjunction with previously published findings by the author, challenges the conventional classification of Yishen Lun as an “Aluoben document” (or a Jingjiao document, for that matter), underscoring the need for further research and inquiry. Full article

Luke sets up Jesus as an example of spirituality in Luke-Acts. In Luke, Jesus does not simply tell his disciples to adopt spiritual practices; he models them, inviting readers to imitate him as well. The first century world was familiar with the power of example. Leaders in Luke’s literary world were often idealized because they taught or legislated not just through words, but through the virtuous example of their lives. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus invites his followers to follow him on the pathway to prayer and simplicity in a similar manner. Like the Lukan Jesus, Numa and Lycurgus, Plutarch’s legendary kings, legislate piety and simplicity through their own lifestyles during their lifetimes. Plutarch devotes significant attention to the issue of their influence after their deaths. Luke’s authorial audience also might have wondered how the powerful effect of Jesus’ exemplary instruction might be sustained after his crucifixion and ascension. In Acts, we see that Jesus’ followers have internalized his instruction and example of prayer and simplicity through the power of the Holy Spirit, adopting Jesus’ spiritual patterns as their own. Early receptions of Lukan texts on prayer and simplicity in Luke-Acts show that the early church continues to follow this practice, looking to Jesus as a model of spirituality for their own lives and the lives of their communities. Full article

This paper attempts to perform a phenomenology of forgiveness by way of careful analysis of texts on time-consciousness and alterity by Edmund Husserl. It does so in two ways: first, by identifying the manner in which we give time to ourselves as both absolute and concrete subjectivity; and second by identifying the way in which our relation to other persons has an isomorphic, structural similarity with our self-relation as temporality. The final part of the paper engages with three biblical texts—the story of Joseph and his brothers in Genesis, where forgiveness is mentioned for the first time—and two short passages in the Gospels of Luke and John. Ultimately, the paper concludes that forgiveness of self and other occurs as a kind of pre-giving or fore-giving in the sense of opening up new meaning for us all to inhabit. Full article

Both practitioners and researchers confirm the utility of spiritual assistance for victims of violence, but the opportunities for religious spiritual assistance for persons who have experienced workplace mobbing have remained little explored in recent years. Although it is acknowledged that biblical narratives can help to structure personal experiences in coping with the traumatic consequences of violence, the main problem is the indefiniteness of the systematic application of specific texts in the process of assisting victims of workplace mobbing. In order to fill this gap, the analysis of the literature on workplace mobbing was performed and based on the identified essential features of the phenomenon, the types of response to violent behaviour in the Gospel of Luke were distinguished. Links between workplace mobbing and the gospel as well as guidelines for their practical application are discussed. Full article

Four New Testament writings mention Samaritans and Samaria—Luke–Acts, John, and Matthew. We must consider that all Samaritan texts in the New Testament are based on a historically correct knowledge of the cult of YHWH worshippers in Samaria oriented towards the Gerizim. If the YHWH admirers in Samaria are to be understood as one of the two independent “Israel” denominations that existed in the Palestinian heartland during the post-exilic period, consequently, in John, Matthew, and Luke–Acts, attention is paid to their understanding of the ecclesiological significance of “Israel” and to Christological aspects. Moreover, the authors of the Gospels reflect a semantically young phenomenon, when Σαμαρῖται is understood beyond the ethnicon as a term for a group religiously distinct from Judaism. At the time of Paul, the term “Samaritan” had not yet been established to refer to the religiously defined group. This means that care must be taken when interpreting the term “Israel” and “Israelites” in all Jewish or Jewish-Christian texts written before 70 A.D. This also applies to Paul: when Paul speaks of “Israel”, “Israelites”, and “circumcision”, he could have consciously used inclusive terminology that, in principle, included the (later named) “Samaritans” in the diaspora. Full article

The ending to Shakespeare’s Tragedy of King Lear has generated much debate. Performance history and critical interpretations of the conclusion of the Folio version of Lear have been pronouncedly divided into readings intimating the tragic hero’s redemption and readings averring his ultimately bleak condition, whether of delusion or despair. Recent attempts to describe Shakespeare’s use of scripture in this play have offered more nuance, acknowledging the play’s blending of pagan and Christian elements. While King Lear has extensively been compared to the book of Job and to apocalyptic passages in Revelation and Daniel, allusions to the gospel narratives and to Luke in particular raise the thorny question of Cordelia’s role as a Christ-figure. This essay argues that the ambiguous and suggestive nature of Lear’s final words (“Look there, look there!”) is both preserved and illuminated when read as an allusion to Jesus’ words in Luke 17:21. This previously unexplored allusion not only offers guidance for responding to Lear’s exhortation to “Look there” but also resonates within Shakespeare’s play through shared themes of apocalypse, kingdom, sight/insight, and the importance of the heart. Full article

This essay will suggest that Dante’s journey through the earthly paradise in the Purgatorio is a figural representation of the journey of Cleopas and the unnamed disciple on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24. By making several references to the Gospel of Luke, Dante seems to be setting the stage for the reader to understand his own pilgrimage through the Garden of Eden as a retelling of the Emmaus story in the context of the Church Triumphant. Indeed, reading Luke 24 alongside Cantos XXIX–XXXI of the Purgatorio helps students to unpack the complex images of Dante’s experience in light of the themes present in the Emmaus story. For example, the concealment of Beatrice’s face and the gradual unveiling of her beauty mirrors Christ’s gradual revelation of his nature to Cleopas and the unnamed disciple. Cleopas and his companion also walk away from the promise of God revealed in Christ by leaving Jerusalem, just as Dante “took himself” from Beatrice and “set his steps upon an untrue way” (XXX 125, 130). In developing these and other parallels as well as elaborating on their significance for the latter cantos of the Purgatorio, this essay will attempt to establish a pedagogical approach to Books XXIX–XXX that draws on students’ recollections of the familiar Gospel text of Emmaus, which Dante clearly intends (among others) as a resource for appreciating his vision of an essential passage in Christian life. Full article

The paper aims at casting some light on the interrelations among the Gospels, Acts and Revelation. We do not consider words ranking and their frequency of occurrence, as largely done in the literature, but we analyze, statistically, some mathematical aspects of the texts, which the authors were not conscious of. We use mathematical methods developed for specifically studying deep-language parameters of literary texts, such as the number of words per sentence, the number of characters per word, the number of words per interpunctions, the number of interpunctions per sentence, all very likely peculiar to the writer’s style, after having recalled the punctuation in classical languages. First, we consider the full texts of the canonical Gospels, Acts and Revelation, then the partial texts attributable to the Triple Tradition (Matthew, Mark and Luke), to the Double Tradition (Matthew and Luke), Own Tradition (Matthew and Luke) and Q source. The mathematical/statistical tool used confirms and reinforces some general results concerning the Gospels, Acts, Revelation and Q source, but also evidences some interesting differences concerning the number of words per sentence and words per interpunctions, likely casting some light on the capacity of the short-term memory of the readers/listeners of these texts. All these New Testament writings fit very well in the larger Greek literature of the time. The existence of a proto gospel seems more probable than other possible hypotheses. Full article