Today we will finish a few more hermeneutical observations and then get to the key to understanding what Jesus meant in Mark 7.19b: his audience. But first a few more hermeneutical observations. Notice what the Mark 7 story is sandwiched by–two stories that provide further clues.  Just before this story of Jesus’ debate over hand washing is the story of the sick who were healed by touching “the fringe” of Jesus’ cloak.  The Greek word is kraspedon, which is the Greek... Read more

Yesterday we saw that the traditional reading of Mark 7.19b (“Thus he declared all foods clean”) that claims Jesus dispensed with kosher rules and therefore broke with the Judaism of his day, conflicts with his declaration in Matt 5.17ff that he would not break even the least of the commands of Mosaic law. That was a hermeneutical consideration, that is, a look at other parts of revelation that might affect how we interpret Mark 7.19.  Today we will look at... Read more

That’s what Mark 7.19b says in most translations: “Thus he declared all foods clean” (ESV & NASB).  The New Living Translation renders it as follows: “By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God’s eyes.” Just before this Jesus had asked, “Don’t you know that everything from the outside which goes into a man is not able to make him unclean?  Because it does not go into his heart but into his stomach.  Then it... Read more

. . . in their marriages to a woman. We need to hear these stories.  These are men who decided to remain faithful, instead of following their disordered feelings and abandoning their wives and children. Here is a great piece by Doug Mainwaring. Read more

When I was a freshman in high school in New York City, I ran track and cross-country.  I thought I was pretty good.  After all, I won a bronze metal for being on a half-mile relay.  (But I might have been the slowest runner on the relay team.) At the end of the season the coach said to me, “Gerry, you ought to try something else.” (more…) Read more

Walter Bruggemann is a distinguished Old Testament scholar. His enormous prestige will help perpetuate, through this book, distortions and untruths about Israel, both biblical and mod- ern. Sadly, Chosen? is an example of the one-sided propaganda which he says he deplores. For the rest of this, click here: Choosing to Misread – McDermott Read more

Can you be “evangelical” and support gay marriage within the church?  Can you be “evangelical” and affirm actively-same-sex-partnered clergy? Or does that so change the historic meaning of “evangelical” that it becomes difficult to distinguish “evangelical” from “liberal” Christianity? We can learn from the public debate going on in the Church of England. (more…) Read more

Anglicans use a liturgy.  Do they allow room for the Holy Spirit? Read more

A little earthquake just took place in the  academic community. But first, imagine the following scenario. A New Testament scholar at the world’s best known evangelical college, Wheaton College,  concedes that the “Jesus’ wife” papyrus she showed the world in 2012 was a fake.  At that time she stunned the world with a press conference in Rome, after privately informing elite media like the New York Times and the Smithsonian, that she had unearthed “the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” shocking evidence that some in the... Read more

Christians talk incessantly about the gospel, but often are hard-pressed to sum it up in clear biblical terms.  Here is just that. Read more