Loading...I am now getting in the habit of doing Zoom lectures on the New Testament on Sunday afternoons; these are being recorded for my undergraduate course on the New Testament. But all of you are invited to come this week, but because of UNC’s schedule, it will be one lecture instead of two, with Q & A to follow.
There is no charge per se, but I would like to ask for a donation to the blog in exchange, if you can see your way clear to do it. If not, that’s fine – we all have our circumstances! But one of the main reasons I’m doing these lectures is to raise money for the Food Bank of North Carolina; as with all food banks right now, it is in desperate need. Your donation is completely tax deductible.
Here is the info you need:
- Time: Sunday, Feb. 14. 1:00 pm EST.
- Lecture will last about 50 minutes, followed by the 30 minutes of Q&A.
- Topic: Jesus the Jewish Messiah: Understanding the Gospel of Matthew. This lecture considers Matthew as a particularly “Jewish Gospel” and raises an unusually important, difficult, and sometimes troubling question (for Christians): Does Jesus in Matthew expect his followers to stringently keep the Jewish law? The entire Jewish law?
- So, are you interested? Feel free to join us. My suggested minimum donation is $10 (there is no maximum donation ?).
- Three participants will be allowed to ask the questions at the end. These will be the three highest donors.
- In weeks past we have had a number of people donate $50; to be among the top three, you’ll probably need to go a bit higher. But of course, it’s completely up to you! And everyone, donor or not, is absolutely welcome to hear the Q&A. The last few weeks we have heard some terrific questions, some of them difficult to answer. Bring on the zingers!
As indicated, all donations will go directly to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.
In case you wondered, I have no plans to make these lectures generally available. The recordings will be for my class only.
If you want to attend, all you need do is respond by letting us know, here: Register for my Sunday Lectures
Everyone who responds by 11:00 am on Sunday morning will receive a Zoom link by noon, via email from [email protected].
If you have any questions about how it will work, let me know.
- Bart
Hi Bart, I am always interested in learning from you, and I have enjoyed many of the Sunday lectures you have given thus far. However, as you have pushed the lecture begin times back, it has become more challenging for me, because I am a pastor of two churches and the soonest I can be home (if there are no distractions between point A and Z) is 2:00 PM EST. I will have to miss this lecture. For this reason, can any provision be made to allow your Platinum Protagonists to review your recording in the aftermath?
Ah, thanks for the feedback. Right, that’s a problem. The problem on my end is that I have commitments later in the afternoon. I’ll try to be attune to this though. As to the Platinums, that’s an excellent question. I’ll look into it and think about it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/hershel-shanks-dead/2021/02/09/944dbe2c-6a22-11eb-9f80-3d7646ce1bc0_story.html
Apologies for being off-topic somewhat but what did you think of Hershel Shanks who passed away today?
Oh damn. I hadn’t heard. I knew Hershel. He was a complicated man. I did not at *all* like his campaign against hte scholars working diligetnly on the Dead Sea Scrolls; on the other hand, he did more than anyone to bring biblical archaeology to the common person, a huge gift to us all. I actually liked him very much and appreciated what he did, despite the rather sensationalized ways he occasionally did them. He one time got Larry Shiffmann, Bill Dever, Jim Strange, and me in a room for an afternoon to discuss how to keep the faith given knowledge about hte Bible. Shiffmann, of course, is a practicing Jew, STrange was a strong Southern Baptist, Dever and I had left our faith traditions. Hershel ran a conversation with us all and recorded it, to get all our different perspectives. I don’t know what ended up happening to the tape. I’m sorry to hear he has gone. All things considered, he did the world of biblical archaeology a ton of good, even though he was controversial.
The Jew is a symbol of “God’s people” like Israel is a symbol of God’s nation and Jerusalem is a symbol of God’s eternal city etc.. In the blessing of the Jew, their captivity, their rebuilding of the walls, their pilgrimage, their disapproval by the nations, their tiny nation etc it speaks to what God wants of His people – whatever ethnicity they are.
But the Jew would be small in numbers, live in exile, be persecuted, be a blessing to the nations that bless them and so on. And we see that today, 21st Century. And best of all – we see them finally going back home, for the second time, as was promised. Fantastic claims in the bible are paralleled by real, historic facts.
On the positive side, for those of us in Europe the time couldn’t be better!
I remember a Tvangelical exhorting his audience, saying “$10,000 is not too much”. I’m glad you don’t name a maximum donation.
But really, I’d settle for $9,999….
Many thanks. I figured you would have known him…
Bart, I have a question related to this topic that I have long wondered about in a general way, but it came into much sharper focus as I listened to the first few lectures in your Great Courses series on the New Testament. You were discussing how Christians often frame the Mosiac Law as a great burden to the Jews because nobody could live up to it, but that they, in fact, did not see it that way at all – but rather as God’s greatest gift.
My question revolves around the notion that the story of Jesus is the ‘Good News’, indeed, they are called “gospels”.
Even as a teenager, it struck me as odd that learning of a jealous god who will send you to hell if you don’t believe the story was to be considered ‘good news’; to me, it would only be considered good news if your presumption was that you were destined for hell. That didn’t seem like a valid presumption, so it all seemed like bad news to me.
Can you speak to how this came to be known as ‘the good news’, especially since the Jews wouldn’t have considered it so?
I think the good news is that you can escape the torment now, through Christ’s death.
I.e. the good news presupposes some preliminary very bad news.
is there any truth to a hebrew gospel or a hebrew matthew, that always seemed too good to be true
There is one, but it is a Medieval translation from the Greek Gospels
Thank you for a very interesting Sunday lecture!