The Vicar's Bible blog

Too many gospels?

November 18, 2007

According to the gospel writers when Jesus fed the 5000 they had twelve baskets of left-overs left over. It seems that he produced too much bread, more than was needed. The same thing seems to have happened with the gospels themselves. Why do we need four – why not just one?

After all they each tell more or less the same story. Maybe if they had put their heads together the gospel writers could have produced a definitive gospel with all the stories in it (and in the same order). That is if they had all been in the same town, at the same time, working for the same publishing company.

But the gospels didn’t suddenly spring up as new works from scratch. Although they were probably produced in the form we have them in the 60’s (or a bit later for John – the debate continues about when he wrote), their final form depended on earlier versions... Read the rest of the Article. Post a Comment.

Short but with a Punch

November 11, 2007

Philemon is the shortest letter that we have of the apostle Paul. But in it there is an amazing amount of ideas to think on and act on. It is a short letter but jam packed with wisdom...and a punch.

It is a letter that challenges us about repentance and forgiveness. Both of them come with a cost. Onesimus was a slave who ran away from his Christian Master – Philemon, and stole from him on the way. Onesimus did the wrong thing criminally, financially, morally and spiritually. But Onesimus becomes a Christian through Paul the apostle and so realises that he must go back to his Master and say “sorry” for doing the wrong thing.

And not only say the words but face the consequences. ... Read the rest of the Article. Post a Comment

Is preaching worth the effort?

October 21, 2007

One morning this week I was thinking about preaching, and reflecting on the difficulties of preaching to those who aren’t listening, or who don’t want to understand the scriptures, or who don’t turn up to listen in the first place. It was a gloomy kind of reflection as you can imagine. It is made worse when one looks not just at the way people behave during the sermon but what kind of life changes are seen after listening to many sermons.

That night, at the home group I am part of, we discussed the famous parable recorded in Matthew 13 (and Mark 4). Some editions of the Bible call it the parable of the Sower, others the Parable of the Four Soils, and some the Parable of the Seed. But which is it (at least one person in the group was keen to go for all three)? It certainly has reference to those three things. And the first telling of the story ends with the instruction to those who have ears, to hear. So it could be about the kinds of responses the hearers make.

On the other hand in the context of the gospels, it seems to be about the success (or actually the lack of success) of Jesus as the preacher of the kingdom of God. Read the rest of the Article. Post a Comment.

Translation Sunday

September 30, 2007

As I sit in my office to type, I am surrounded by bibles, bibles in English but different translations and bibles in different languages, bibles, bibles everywhere. We often don’t appreciate the time, the work, the struggle that it takes to get a bible translated. We just put it on our shelves.

With many brothers and sisters at All Saints who are working as part of Wycliffe Bible Translators, and today being a day when we thank God for bible translators then we need to be reminded of their hard work and be thankful to God for them and what they produce – the word of God in our heart language. The heart language is the best way in which we hear God speak to us.

We should be thankful to God for the way that He preserved the documents of the Old and New Testament. ... Read the rest of the Article. Post a Comment.

Who knows?

August 26, 2007

Answers in Job

Trouble. Suffering. Answers require Questions. Solutions need Problems. First define the trouble then look for the answer. Problems and Questions are one of the ways to make sense of our troubles.

Sometimes the Answer comes from experience, precedent, what has been observed before. Sometimes it comes from ideology, theory, dogma that prescribes how a thing should work. And sometimes it comes from tradition, what others have always said in the past.

All of these methods often produce good answers or solutions. Sometimes not. But whether they do or not depends also on how the Question is understood. Or how well the question is understood. When it comes to giving advice (whether over a coffee or for fee) it helps if we know what the matter is.

Job understood this. His friends were full of advice, but misunderstood the problem. Which is very surprising because they spoke on the basis of experience, tradition and theology. Their failure exposes two problems: ... Read the rest of the Article. Post a Comment.

Analyzing the search results

1 April 2007 Palm Sunday

Secret signs. Palm branches, donkeys, old words. A swelling crowd. A recent report suggested that the US intelligence organisations were not able to predict the disaster of 9/11 because they were not able to read what each other was reporting. They would have done better if all their data was accessible to a search engine like Google, according to one analyst.

The data about Jesus is quite small by comparison to modern collections of data. It is also much more valuable. And it can be searched by anyone who can read (or hear if you use one of the audio versions of the Bible). But it does contain some hidden clues. Hidden at least until they are discovered. The good thing about these hidden clues is that anyone can uncover them if they read the data. Some of us have discovered more than others, but all of us can discover it.

Christianity is not a secret society with special knowledge only available to the inner few. All its information is public. So what about the palms and the donkey?.... Read the rest of the Article....Post a Comment,

bible blogs 2004-2006

The Nativity Story

Film Review Matthew 2, Luke 2

What is more desirable?

Eating forbidden fruit Gen 3

Knowledge and Ignorance

Da Vinci Code & Gnosticism

Do you really want to know?

Psalm 139

Waiting 2 Sam 5-6

What does that mean?

Interpreting the Bible