Grace & Knowledge Blog

Malachi 4:2 has long been recognized by Christians as a messianic prophecy:

"But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings" (NIV).

In particular, this verse may be in view in Luke 1:78. 

One detail of this verse's connection to Jesus is not so widely recognized, however, outside of the Hebraic roots/Messianic community.  As Lois Tverberg explains in Chapter 11, footnote 8 of Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, the Hebrew word for "wings'' in Mal 4:2 (kanafim) also refers to the "corners'' of a man's garment, to which tassels (tzitziot) were attached.  And so when people received healing by touching the "hem" of Jesus' garment (Mark 6:56), they were being healed by his "wings".

I first learned about the connection between Malachi 4:2 and the tzitziot of Jesus from a Dwight Pryor tape in 1998.     

New Testament scholar Dale Allison has found that this connection is not a new development in Christian exegesis.  In a recent article, he reports that it is mentioned in the Testimony Book of Pseudo-Epiphanius, a Christian source that has been dated to the fourth century AD.  He has also found it in the...

Tags: lois tverberg, rabbi jesus

If you had asked me 30 years ago what the Kingdom of God was about, I would have mentioned the future reign of Christ over the whole earth.  I might have quoted Dan. 2:44 or Rev 11:15, as Herbert Armstrong did in his booklet on the subject. 

In those days in the old Worldwide Church of God (WCG), we placed a lot of emphasis on that coming kingdom.  We were adventists, and the reality of Jesus' second advent was very important to us.  And so in reading Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom in the Gospels, we tended to emphasize some verses and read past some other ones.

Later, when WCG instituted doctrinal reforms in the 1990s, it began to present a more complete teaching that recognized the Kingdom as both a present and a future reality.

In chapter 13 of Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg give a wonderful summary of Jesus'  multifaceted teaching about the Kingdom of God, enhanced by comparison with early rabbinic teaching. 

 Like the rabbis, Jesus seemed to see the Kingdom broadly in terms of God's reign.  And so to pray  "thy kingdom come" means not only  to pray for Jesus' return, but also...

Tags: lois tverberg, rabbi jesus, wcg

I was pleased to learn about a week ago that some of P.G. Wodehouse's early novels can be downloaded to the Amazon Kindle for free.

About 15 years ago, Sherry and I had a great time reading through all of Wodehouse's Jeeves stories.  I'm now reading to her Uneasy Money, a romantic comedy that was first published in the U.S. in 1916 after appearing in installments in the Saturday Evening Post. 

Although this novel was written during World War I, it mentions nothing directly about the war.  Wodehouse's characters are concerned about things like golf, baseball, and marriage, but they live in a world without wars and rumors of wars.  His readers, who were weighed down enough by world events, no doubt appreciated the opportunity to escape temporarily from the bad news reported daily in the press. 

Uneasy Money was made into a silent movie in 1918.  There's enough physical comedy (e.g., a pet monkey that throws eggs) and twists and turns of plot in the book to support a good silent movie, but there's no way the movie could have done justice to Wodehouse's dextrous use of the English language, the thing that makes his writing so much fun to read.

Tags: amazon kindle, books

One detail that I'll always remember about September 11, 2001, is that it was a Tuesday.

I know it was a Tuesday because the Gideons, the folks who place Bibles in hotel rooms and elsewhere, were on campus that day, handing students tiny green King James Verson New Testaments.  The Gideons always visit Miami University on a Tuesday, exactly eight days after Labor Day.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I stopped to say hello to one of the Gideons as I walked across the campus on my way to work, and he was the one who told me about the terrorist attacks that were occurring.

Life in a college town has very regular rhythms.  The same things happen year after year, on a predictable schedule.  I take some comfort in that predictably.   

Since today is eight days after Labor Day, I knew the Gideons would be on campus again.  In preparation, I packed one of the tiny green New Testaments in my briefcase.  That  way when I walked past them I could show them that I had a copy already, and they would not feel obliged to hand me another one. 

Tags: campus life

In 2008 my son Timothy gave me a wonderful Father's Day gift--an Amazon Kindle ebook reader.

It didn't take me long to fall in love with this amazing little gadget, which I find is often as pleasant to read from as a conventional book.   (There are exceptions. The Kindle doesn't do well with pictures or graphs,  and I can't imagine trying to deal with a mathematical monograph in this format.) 

 My favorite features of the Kindle include:

• the ability to adjust the font size, effectively making every book a large print book.
• the ability to easily look up endnotes with a simple click.
• the fact that free samples are available. Most samples include about a chapter.  One very generous one--for the recent book Newton and the Counterfeiter--gives the first 60 pages or so.
• the fact that a number of classic literary works can be downloaded free of charge, and many others are just a few dollars.
• the fact that one can order a book or free sample and start reading it right away.

Tags: amazon kindle, books

One important part of Christianity's inheritance from Judaism is the concept of discipleship.  As Lois Tverberg and Ann Spangler show in the fourth chapter of Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, making disciples is central to both Jewish and Christian traditions--see Matt 28:19 and Pirke Avot 1.1.

Tverberg and Spangler explain that first-century discipleship was not just about conveying information; rather, it was about effecting a personal transformation.  Like an apprentice to a skilled craftsman, a disciple entered into a prolonged close relationship with a teacher, imitating the teacher's actions as well as drinking in the teacher's words.

The prototype for the teacher/disciple relationship is the relationship between the prophet Elijah and his successor Elisha.  When Elijah calls Elisha, Elisha puts his own plans aside to become Elijah's servant (I Kings 19:19-21).   Elisha's dedication to Elisha becomes the model for  the disciples of Jesus hundreds of years later--see e.g. Luke 5:1-11; 9:57-62.  

There are more parallels here.  Elisha will eventually see his beloved teacher ascend in a heavenly chariot after asking for a "double portion" of the spirit of Elijah (2 Kings 2), prefiguring the ascension of Jesus and the Pentecost event.

Tverberg...

Tags: lois tverberg, rabbi jesus

Today I learned that my friend, journalist Jared Olar, has been laid off from his job recently.

Jared gave our magazine Grace & Knowledge its name back in 1998 and is largely responsible for turning the magazine from an idea in our heads into a reality. 

Let's pray that his period of unemployment will be short. 

Tags: jared olar, prayer request

A few years ago, a Time Magazine article identified "Re-Judaizing Jesus"---especially, embracing the  principle that Jesus can't be properly understood apart from his first-century Jewish context---as a major trend.

On the level of scholarship, this trend means that the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" is at long last fully living up to its name. 

Originally, the  "quest" was about skeptics describing a Jesus they could believe in.  The goal was to separate the "Jesus of history" from the "Christ of faith".  For example, American President Thomas Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral teacher but didn't believe in the Virgin Birth,  the Resurrection, or Jesus' healing miracles.  He produced an edited version of the gospels, removing all traces of the miraculous.

Such efforts failed to pay sufficient attention to the historical background of the gospels.  As a result, their authors created Jesuses in their own image.  While critical of the gospel text, they uncritically passed along false negative stereotypes about first-century Judaism.  These defects persist right up through the work of the modern Jesus Seminar.

But in the recent "Third Quest", the emphasis has been on the Jewishness of Jesus.  There's been a great deal of fruitful interaction between Christian and Jewish scholars.  Scholarly commentaries from...

Tags: lois tverberg, rabbi jesus