A clash between entrenched demonic powers and one proclaiming the Kingdom of Heaven.
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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.
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Jesus’ Temptation and Its Jewish Background
How Jewish tradition informs our understanding of the temptation narrative.
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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?
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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.
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Indiscriminate Catastrophe
The consequences of persisting in violent struggle with the Roman Empire would be suffered by the innocent and the guilty alike.
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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.
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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.
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Yeshua’s Testing
The LOY reconstruction and commentary on the story of Jesus’ temptation.
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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.
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