Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Epistle to the Romans”
In this article David Flusser applies the methods of the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research and the insights of Robert Lindsey’s solution to the Synoptic Problem to Jesus’ prophecy concerning the destruction and liberation of Jerusalem.
The apostles possessed more empirical supports for their faith than we can ever hope to possess, and certainly their spiritual “report cards” did not suffer for the fact.
This piece of writing is a rare glimpse of David Flusser the theologian. Flusser, who died in Jerusalem in 2000, penned the article as an introduction to Israel, God’s Key to World Redemption, a book written in 1974 by his close friend, the late Elmer A. Josephson. In 1956 Josephson founded Bible Light International, a non-profit religious organization that seeks to “arouse the Christian evangelical community’s conscience toward the emerging nation of Israel and stimulate expressions of encouragement to the Jewish community in its Zionist aspirations.” Jerusalem Perspective Online wishes to thank Bible Light International for permission to publish this article in electronic format. Jerusalem Perspective supplied the article’s title. — JP
Paul mentions the living sacrifices without explanation, as if the readers would be familiar with the concept. Similar early rabbinic vocabulary suggests that Paul is referring to sacrifices which were given to the Temple but which were inappropriate for offering, because they were female instead of male or for other technical reasons. They could not be un-offered so, although they were sacrifices, they were kept alive as temple property till they became blemished, and any profit from them was for the Lord.
In Rom. 12:3 pistis refers not to believing in God, nor to the adequacy of one’s service to God, but rather to the aspect and area of stewardship or responsibility that God has assigned to each believer.
The word abba (אַבָּא), which literally means “the father” in Aramaic, but also can mean “our father” or “my father,” was brought into Hebrew and used in the endearing sense of “daddy.”
If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Lk. 14:26, RSV)
Romans 8:28 has been read as a free-floating logion for years (at least in the American Bible culture), divorced from a context that would, if properly respected, lend it a much more limited meaning.
It is now a commonplace observation among scholars that Paul’s most basic convictions were misrepresented by the most dominant streams of Western theology.
Diverging views on the doctrine of original sin represent a great chasm fixed between scholars and theologians today.
