“If we miss Jesus’ life and the kind of man He was, we have a theological deficit. Jesus was brilliant. He was funny.” The Gospels are more than a weigh-station on the way to the cross. How can we preach, teach, and read the fourfold Gospel for all they’re worth? A podcast interview with Todd Chipman.
Scholars and the media love a good early Christian conspiracy.
You may have noticed that “kingdom” language is frequent in the Gospels and Jesus’ teaching, but seems to almost disappear in the rest of the NT. After examining every instance of βασιλεία in the NT, this is what I found….
Imagine that you are about to preach on the Sermon on the Mount. You have no interest in form or redaction criticism; you don’t care about Q. But you are also aware of the benefits of studies that compare Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount with Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, and you realize critical literary studies can be helpful for understanding the Sermon as a whole. You have a couple options available: Carson has published a book with a 110-page exposition of the Sermon, but there is little discussion of the critical research; it focuses on expositing the text. On the other hand, there is the ICC commentary by Davies and Allison on Matthew 1-7, which would contain all the critical data you need, but would probably not be much help with expositing the text as a coherent message from Jesus (not to mention its enormous length)….