How well do you know the Christmas story?
The Christmas story is as old as time. But how well do we know it really? Test yourself against these twelve questions.
Tag: NewTestament
When was the New Testament written?
Historians ask who wrote the New Testament books, when they wrote them, and why, to help make judgments about their accuracy. A new book examines this.
Believing in Jesus through faith and doubt
In almost 60 years as a believer, I have had times of faith and times of doubt. So why do I keep on believing in Jesus and trying to follow his teachings?
Nazareth in Jesus’ day: 4 facts
The Bible says Jesus grew up in Nazareth, but until recently the evidence for this was scant and disputed by some. But now there is clear evidence of a small agricultural village or town in the first century.
How accurate is the text of the New Testament?
Is the Bible we read today the same as the one originally written? Has the original text been changed beyond recognition, or do scholars have so many copies that they can reconstruct the text with a great deal of confidence?
9. Does the historical Jesus reveal God?
This page in brief …. Christians believe that Jesus showed us what God is like. If that claim is true, we have a strong reason to believe God really exists. So in this page we look at three criteria that we might use to evaluate this claim – the historical evidence for Jesus’ life and […]
Going from the historical Jesus to the Jesus of faith
A reader commenting on this blog asked me some questions about Jesus and history and I thought that they were good questions worthy of a decent response. Part of John’s comment was: “So I was curious as to what your specific Christian beliefs were …. where you stand on Christ’s divinity. It’s one thing to […]
How to read the Bible if you’re an unbeliever
I reckon too many people, christian and non-christians alike, read the Bible in the wrong way. So how should an unbeliever approach the Bible if he or she wants to read it honestly, whether to learn from it or to critique it?
Four things the historians tell us about Jesus’ miracles – and one thing they don’t
A few months back I responded to a discussion I was having about Jesus’ miracles by writing a post on the historical evidence. I have since turned that post into a permanent page, Did Jesus really perform miracles?, so I thought I would summarise the main conclusions here. Some of them may be surprising to […]
How can a christian possibly believe in something as impossible as the resurrection of Jesus?
It’s Easter again, which evokes different responses in different people. Some people think about the claim that, after he was executed, Jesus was raised to life by God. Of all the critical comments I have received on this blog, criticism of christian belief about the resurrection of Jesus is one of the most common and […]