Human Spirits or Spirits of the Fallen Angels? According to Christian tradition, after his death and before his resurrection, Jesus descended into the realm of the dead, often referred to as “Sheol” or “Hades.” It is believed that during this time, Jesus preached to the spirits who were imprisoned there. The concept of Jesus preaching … Read more
Introduction For many Christians the topic of the Apocryphal books is far from a burning interest. In fact, a large number of Christians might give you a blank stare if you ask them if they even know what they are. The Apocryphal books, also known as Deuterocanonical, are books of the Old Testament that fall … Read more
I’ve previously discussed the difficulty in reading the KJV and the issue of outdated languages, however, I was recently having a discussion about such archaic words and I thought it would be nice to have a list of such words, where they occurred in scripture, and what they meant in modern English. I was lucky … Read more
Introduction to the Apocrypha That strange collection of books retained in the Catholic Bibles, the NRSV, and some old KJV Bibles is not just additional history reading. These books are called the Apocryphal writing and are filled with teachings that create a bridge between the Old Testament and the New Testament theologically. They are also … Read more
Assumptions, Faith and Facts I grew up in Northern Ohio, in rather small towns. Nothing about my childhood was particularly “religious” in nature, other than the fact that I went to a Catholic school. By “religious” I mean the practice of faith, not the belief in anything. It was not until I was 16 that … Read more
I learned a long time ago that the cross-reference in the margins of the average Bible was a helpful guide to understanding how the New Testament (NT) and the Old Testament (OT) relate to one another. Somewhere around 2009 I also made the realization that some of the OT references listed in the NT were … Read more