How and why are High Priests from the end of the Second Temple Period remembered in rabbinic sources?
Love That Costs: Jesus, the Good Samaritan, and the Enemy Next Door
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is a deeply unsettling mirror, revealing that love of one’s neighbor is tested not with strangers at the far edges of the world, but close to home—at our own doorstep, among those with whom we share past conflict, mistrust, disappointment, and hurt.
The Good Tidings of John the Baptist: An Eschatological Priestly Messiah Coming on the Clouds of the Spirit
I wish to highlight how John the Baptist’s priestly orientation also led to tension between Jesus and John the Baptist.
Yohanan the Immerser’s Eschatological Discourse
John the Baptist anticipated the coming of an Elijah-like priestly messiah who would purify the Temple on an eschatological Day of Atonement.
The Good Samaritan
The parable of the Good Samaritan came as a response to the lawyer’s question, “And who is my neighbor?” The lawyer wanted Jesus to draw a circle defining who is inside, and therefore the neighbor I must love, and who is outside. Jesus, by using Leviticus 19:34, ingeniously turned the lawyer’s question on its head.
This article is a sample chapter of Marc Turnage’s, Windows into the Bible: Cultural and Historical Insights into the Bible for Modern Readers (Springfield, Mo.: Logion, 2016), which will be released at the end of March 2016.
Character Profile: Chief Priests and Sadducees
Why did the chief priests and Sadducees continue to oppose the early believers even after the crucifixion of Jesus? In this video Marc Turnage places the chief priests and Sadducees in their historical context and explains why the preaching of the apostles was unwelcome news to the Temple authorities in Jerusalem.
Character Profile: Joseph Caiaphas
The high priest Joseph Caiaphas is known not only from the New Testament Gospels as the high priest who opposed Jesus and his early followers, but also from Josephus the Jewish historian who lived in the first century C.E. In this video Marc Turnage provides an historical sketch of this pivotal character.
The Gospel of John’s Jewish-Christian Source
In an important study entitled The Gospel of Signs, Robert Fortna correctly identified a Jewish-Christian source embedded in the Fourth Gospel. This article is based upon the conclusions of Fortna’s research and explores their significance. I will also point out additional evidence Fortna overlooked that clarifies the origins and intentions of the Jewish-Christian source embedded in the text of the Fourth Gospel.
From Melchizedek to Jesus: The Higher Eternal Priest in Jewish Second Temple Literature
A scroll from the Judean Desert proves that the biblical Melchizedek was transformed into the eschatological high priest in some Jewish circles in the first century B.C.E.
The Jewish Cultural Nature of Galilee in the First Century
The prevailing opinion among New Testament scholars is that first-century Galilee was culturally and spiritually deprived, and that, therefore, Jesus came from an underdeveloped and backward Jewish region of the land of Israel. Professor Safrai here presents massive evidence against this view.