James's Weblog

Question: Who said this?

Christianity isn't a list of rules to follow or a strict theological code. It is primarily about a relationship with a God whose character means that he seeks a relationship with you. The Bible is full to the brim of accounts of God seeking a relationship with people who fail, and are then rescued from that failure by the God who loves them despite the fact that they hardly love him back.

God doesn't just need to patch us up, he gives us new birth and makes us brand new creatures.

Mounce quotes Chrysostom's fifth homily whilst commenting on Titus 3:5. Titus 3:5 says this:

John, in his Gospel, loves the motifs of light and dark. Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. When Judas slipped out of the last supper to betray Jesus, it was night.

John's account of the empty tomb records Mary Magdalene going to the tomb "while it was still dark".

This worries a few people, but it need not.

The worry is that Mark records 3 women going to the tomb "just after sunrise". He seems to want to highlight the fact that it was day time, so they could see where they were going and what they were witnessing.

I owe to my friend John Goulding the following observation:

In Jonah 4, God provided a plant to shield Jonah from the heat. The verb "to provide" is a key-word in Jonah - it's מָנָה (manah). The worm that ate the manah / the provided plant was a תּוֹלָע (tola`). That's not a common word in the Old Testament (39x). 27 of those are in the book of Exodus, where the usual meaning is (by metonymy) the purple die made from a particular type of worm. But one is Exodus 16:20.