Trust in God and faithfulness to his Kingdom will surmount seemingly impossible obstacles.
Preserving and Destroying
Jesus’ Preserving and Destroying saying may play off two different senses of the noun נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “soul”).
Sign-Seeking Generation
What was “the sign of Jonah”? This LOY segment offers a new and surprising answer.
Woes on Three Villages
The Woes on Three Villages express Jesus’ sorrow that Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum had not responded to his warning not to get sucked into the black hole of violent religious nationalism.
LOY Excursus: Sources of the “Strings of Pearls” in Luke’s Gospel
The “strings of pearls” (Luke 8:16-18; 9:23-27; 16:16-18; 17:1-6) offer an example of the outsized influence of the First Reconstruction on the synoptic tradition.
Sending the Twelve: Conduct in Town
David N. Bivin and Joshua N. Tilton suggest a Hebrew reconstruction of Jesus’ instructions about how the twelve apostles were to behave when they entered a town. In this pericope we learn about the giving and receiving of hospitality among Jesus’ earliest followers. We also learn what may be wrong about the popular view that shaking the dust from the apostles’ feet was a symbolic action meant to signal to Jews who rejected Jesus that they were henceforth to be considered as Gentiles.