To obtain the Tree of Life one must pass through the Narrow Gate.
Houses on Rock and Sand Parable
The choice is between doing what Jesus says or letting everything fall into ruin.
Teaching in Kefar Nahum
A clash between entrenched demonic powers and one proclaiming the Kingdom of Heaven.
Heaven and Earth Pass Away
Jesus claimed his interpretations would bring out the true intention of the Torah’s commandments without rendering a single verse, word, letter, or even pen stroke superfluous.
Jesus’ Temptation and Its Jewish Background
How Jewish tradition informs our understanding of the temptation narrative.
Like Children Complaining
Were Jesus and John the Baptist like children who played a dance and a dirge? Or was Jesus’ generation one that complained like whining children about the prophets who came to warn it?
Carrion Birds
Carrion Birds describes the enormity of the destruction Jesus foresaw. Israel would be rendered carrion to be picked over by the Roman legions.
Indiscriminate Catastrophe
The consequences of persisting in violent struggle with the Roman Empire would be suffered by the innocent and the guilty alike.
Days of the Son of Man
In Jesus’ saying, the Son of Man does not function as the agent of destruction, any more than Noah did in the time of the flood or Lot did in the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Innocent Blood
How well-read was Jesus? The LOY segment entitled Innocent Blood probes the possibility that Jesus read and quoted a no-longer-extant Second Temple-period Jewish literary work that warned against violent religious extremism.
Yohanan the Immerser Demands Repentance
In Yohanan the Immerser Demands Repentance John the Baptist challenges his audience, which had gone through all the trouble of going out to the Jordan River to receive his baptism, to accept his even more important advice: to repent of their evil deeds and imitate the faithfulness of Abraham their father.
“Shake the Dust from Your Feet”: What Did the Apostles’ Action Signify?
The standard interpretation of the apostles’ dust-shaking action proposes that Jesus turned the concept of the impurity of Gentile lands against the Jewish inhabitants of cities within the (ritually pure) land of Israel. This interpretation concludes that shaking the dust from their feet dramatically symbolized that Jesus’ apostles would henceforth regard the Jewish inhabitants of a city that had rejected their message as though they were cut off from Israel. It is time for this mistaken interpretation to finally be put to rest.
Jesus’ “Harvest” Saying
Although Christians often associate parables exclusively with Jesus, rabbinic literature reveals that this form of expression was well established as an instructional tool among Israel’s first-century teachers. The fact that Jesus used parables to teach is evidence that he was a characteristic sage functioning in a world of sages. Jesus’ efforts were directed toward bringing more and more people under God’s reign—or, in the rabbinic parlance he used, getting them into the “Kingdom of Heaven.” That was what Jesus was referring to in Matthew 9:37-38. Although he used different words, Jesus stressed the same points as the rabbinic saying in m. Avot 2:15: 1) although difficult, the work of the Kingdom of Heaven is all-important, and, 2) God is interested in the urgent completion of the work.