From the Jesus Seminar who gave us The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (HarperCollins, 1993) we now have The New New Testament (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013). The Jesus Seminar convened in 1985 to undertake a quest for the historical Jesus. They first looked at his sayings and his deeds and then proceeded to discuss what emerged from this evidence. Using a system involving voting with coloured marbles they concluded that, of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels, only about 18% were authentic. In doing this, they refused to privilege the canonical gospels, and included a fifth Gospel, the Gospel of Thomas. This Gospel, which contains 114 sayings of Jesus – some of which are paralleled in the canonical gospels – survives in a single Coptic Manuscript, and in a few Greek fragments dated from the second century. Most scholars date it to the second century, although some, including the members of the Jesus Seminar, believe that the sayings of Jesus it preserves are much earlier, and that it was composed around the same time or maybe earlier than the canonical Gospels. On the other hand they also claim that some NT books were not written until at least 140 years after Jesus, including the Gospel of Luke! Not a word is said about the extravagance of this claim and they nowhere admit that very few NT scholars believe it. Read More...

Bob Jones is at it again. In the NZ Herald today (19/03/2013) he has commented on the decline of religious adherence in the recent British census. He speaks of his hope that the same thing will happen in NZ. No doubt his hope will be realised, as there is no secret that European Kiwis who make up the majority of the population have been rejecting institution religion for decades now. Sadly for Bob, we Europeans don’t have many kids, so NZ will increasingly become non-European and religious adherence will begin to rise as we are peopled by Polynesians, Asians and others in the future. Read More...

The New Zealand Herald Canvas magazine contains a list of questions each week under the heading “Brain Trainer.” I usually read them and try out my general knowledge. Question 5 on 26 January 2013 had me stumped, “Which huge-selling book contains no quotations?” I expected that the answer may be the Bible (although I was unsure that it was accurate). I turned to the answers on p. 31, and sure enough, my suspicion was confirmed. According to Tony Potter who compiles the questions each week, the Bible contains no quotations.  Read More...

Recently I got to write some study notes for the Bible Society and spent a bit of time in Matthew’s advent story. What a joy it was to focus more attention on his version of Christmas. I discovered a whole lot of things I had never noticed before. I thought I would share some of them briefly. I encourage you to read Matthew’s story in light of these and see what else you can find in them. Matthew of course wrote to Jews to demonstrate that Jesus is truly Messiah and the culmination of Israel’s story. There is such depth in it that it is mind-blowing. Read More...

A couple of months ago the news broke that in a previously unpublished papyrus fragment dated perhaps to the fourth century, but maybe a copy of a text from two centuries earlier, words apparently from the mouth of Jesus refer to someone as “my wife ...” The previous line refers to someone called “Mary.” The research was carried out and the text published by Professor Karen L. King of Harvard University, and is available on the internet – apologies for the long URL - (http://www.hds.harvard.edu/sites/hds.harvard.edu/files/attachments/faculty-research/research-projects/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife/29865/King_JesusSaidToThem_draft_0920.pdf).  Read More...