In Bart Ehrman’s book, How Jesus Became God, he argues (as the title suggests) that the historical Jesus was just a man—an apocalyptic prophet who expected the end of the world within his lifetime, but who was crucified by Rome. We’ll call this Point A. Yet that gradually over the years, his followers ended up…
Over the past decade or so, Bart Ehrman has made quite a name for himself, having written numerous books about Jesus and early Christianity that, to say the very least, have stirred up some controversy. Just a quick look on Amazon turns up books by Ehrman whose titles scream, “Let’s freak people out!” –Misquoting Jesus,…
In actuality, Eleazar ben-Simon and Zacharias ben-Phalek, two of the zealot leaders who, along with the rest of the zealots, were trapped in the Temple, smuggled out a letter to the Idumeans. In it, they told the Idumeans that Ananus had betrayed Jerusalem and the Jews, had already sent word to Vespasian and the Romans…
After the zealots had seized control of the temple complex and thrown out all the established priests, the high priest Ananus made one last effort to regain control of the city and crush the zealot revolutionaries. The fact was the majority of the citizens in Jerusalem, although they had no love for Rome, quickly saw…
Upon coming to Jerusalem, John of Gischala attempted to rally the populace to engage the Roman army in battle. He had seen the difficulty the Roman soldiers had when they attempted to take some of the more fortified cities in Galilee—and he was convinced that Jerusalem was big enough and vastly more fortified than any…
After the taking of Jotapata, Vespasian dispatched the 5th and 10th legions to secure Scythopolis in Samaria, while he took two other legions to the coastal city of Caesarea. From there, he marched down the coast to Joppa, and promptly destroyed it. Meanwhile, some of the Jews who had escaped from Jotapata made their way…
I thought I’d share two poems I wrote quite awhile ago. The first one is 25 years old–I wrote it on the Easter my sister and I were stranded in Colby, Kansas, with a broken down truck that was in the shop over the Easter weekend. The second one is 20 years old–I wrote it…
What better way to conclude my analysis of Ken Ham’s Six Days: The Age of the Earth and the Decline of the Church than with a seventh post? On this seventh post, I will rest from my critique of Ken Ham. The final chapter of Ham’s book is entitled, “Implications of Accepting Evolutionary Ideas.” In…
Here in my second-to-last installment in my blog series looking at Ken Ham’s book, Six Days: The Age of the Earth and the Decline of the Church, I am going to take a look at chapters 9 and 10…Enjoy. Chapter 9: The Necessity of a Historical Adam If you have been keeping up with this…
In this next post of my book analysis of Ken Ham’s book, Six Days: The Age of the Earth and the Decline of the Church, I am going to take a look at chapter 7 (“Genesis and Evolutionary Ideas”) and chapter 8 (“Was There a Global Flood?”). Chapter 7: Pot Shots at Christians who know…