Christians read their Bibles through a lens of historical hindsight to illuminate certain features of Jesus’ teaching. Jews living in the first century did not have this benefit, and even one as saintly as John the Baptist struggled with aspects of Jesus’ messianic conduct.
Why I Am a Member of the Jerusalem School
The appeal of the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research lies in the potential of its research methodologies to make the words and claims of Jesus clearer.
“Son of Man”: Jesus’ Most Important Title
There is a common thread uniting the views of those who think that Jesus signaled Daniel 7 by using the Aramaic bar enash in the middle of Hebrew speech. Anyone who holds this view must assume that Jesus spoke or taught in Hebrew much of the time. That Jesus used Hebrew a significant amount of the time is a sociolinguistic conclusion that has a growing number of supporters in New Testament scholarship, but one that is still a minority opinion.
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The “How Much More” Rabbinic Principle of Interpretation in the Teaching of Jesus
The use of simple-to-complex reasoning (kal vahomer in Hebrew) is as frequent in the teaching of Jesus as in the teaching of the sages.
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Jesus’ Use of “Amen”: Introduction or Response?
It is not surprising to find the word “amen” attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. What is unusual is to find “amen” used as the beginning of a statement rather than as a response.
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“Prophet” as a Messianic Title
There can be little doubt that Jesus viewed himself as a prophet, and that many of his contemporaries concurred.
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Semitic Background to the Nain Story
The short account of the resurrection of the widow’s son in Nain has a very Semitic feeling. If the Nain story was written originally in Greek, it is a very semitically flavored Greek. Several linguistic features of this story suggest that it may have been written originally in Hebrew.
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