Preparations for Eating the Passover Lamb

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Careful analysis shows that a Hebraic source ultimately stands behind the Synoptic Gospels and that this source is best preserved in Luke. Luke’s version of the Preparations for Eating Passover Lamb preserves details—such as Jesus taking the initiative to send the two disciples, commanding the disciples to prepare the lamb, and using Hebraic idiom—that fit the cultural context of first-century Judaism.

Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part Five (Parallelism)

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Parallelism is a central feature of Hebrew poetry. It permeates the words of biblical poet and prophet. The frequency with which parallelism occurs in the utterances of Jesus is surprising, and leads inevitably to the conclusion that the Greek source (or, sources) used by the authors of Matthew, Mark and Luke derive(s) from a Greek translation (or, translations) of Hebrew documents.

Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part Four (Parallelism)

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Doubling, or repeating, is a characteristic feature of Hebrew. Hebrew loves to say things twice (or more!) by adding equivalents. Words, phrases, sentences, and even stories, are doubled (or tripled).

Is the Search for Literary Sources of the Synoptic Gospels Futile?

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Indeed, the search for literary sources that may be reflected in a piece of writing can be risky business. In the case of the Synoptic Gospels, however, we possess multiple accounts of the same events—events that originally occurred in a Hebrew-speaking environment, but were eventually recorded in Greek.

Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part Three (Impersonal “They”)

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Awareness of even the simplest Hebrew grammatical structure can bring to life a vague, or difficult-to-understand, saying of Jesus. Since potential Hebrew idioms are so dense in the Greek texts of Matthew, Mark and Luke, one has to ask, Could these apparent Hebrew idioms be evidence that the synoptic Gospels are descendants of an ancient translation of a Hebrew “Life of Jesus,” the gospel that the church father Papias spoke of when he wrote: “Matthew…arranged the sayings [of Jesus] in the Hebrew language”?

Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part Two (Luke 9:51-56)

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Relatively few of the suggested Semitisms underlying the Greek New Testament constitute clear-cut proof for a Hebrew undertext, but a high density of Hebraisms in a given passage increases the probability that it is “translation Greek.”

The “Hypocrisy” of the Pharisees

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Without reading the Scriptures carefully, and without a familiarity with Second Temple-period extra-biblical sources, a simple reader of the New Testament might assume that a majority of the Pharisees were hypocrites and that the Pharisees as a movement were indeed a “brood of vipers.” As a result of this common Christian assumption, the word “Pharisee” has become a synonym for “hypocrite” in the English language.

From Melchizedek to Jesus: The Higher Eternal Priest in Jewish Second Temple Literature

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A scroll from the Judean Desert proves that the biblical Melchizedek was transformed into the eschatological high priest in some Jewish circles in the first century B.C.E.

The Jewish Cultural Nature of Galilee in the First Century

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The prevailing opinion among New Testament scholars is that first-century Galilee was culturally and spiritually deprived, and that, therefore, Jesus came from an underdeveloped and backward Jewish region of the land of Israel. Professor Safrai here presents massive evidence against this view.