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The Two Songs of Luke's Gospel Chapter One

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  (Painting of Mary and Elizabeth) Introduction I’ve been thinking about the two songs in the opening chapter of the Gospel of Luke. One is from Mary the mother of Jesus, and the other is from Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. I think that in these two songs we find some key themes that Luke repeats throughout his gospel in his description of the ministry of Jesus. As always, when interpreting the New Testament, I’m trying to focus on how the first century Jewish people living under Roman occupation in Israel would have heard and understood these words.   I’m not doing a detailed study here, just a brief sketch.   All Scripture passages are from the English Standard Version. Mary sings her song as a response to being greeted by her relative Elizabeth in the Judean hill country. Both women are pregnant with their firstborn child. Elizabeth, an older woman past the normal age of childbearing, will soon miraculously give birth to John the Baptist. Mary, who is a virgin, will
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Misunderstanding the Great Commission

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  What we Christians call the “Great Commission” is a saying of Jesus that is traditionally understood as His call for us to preach the gospel to all of humanity.   The problem is we tend to read the idea of Paul’s gospel of “salvation from the power of sin by believing on Jesus as Lord” back into this text when that content is simply not there. We thus assign a different meaning to the “Great Commission” than Jesus originally intended. We find the Great Commission in the Gospel of Matthew. As such, we must understand it within the context of that gospel. Each of the four gospels was written at a different time, to a different audience and for specific theological purposes. The gospel of Matthew is very Jewish in content, and it focuses on Jesus as the New Moses, the Teacher of the ways of God, and as Messiah, the promised Jewish Deliverer. In the gospel, Jesus teaches on the dawning of the Kingdom of God, which is a new way of living in the immediate Presence and Authority of God.
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Studies in the Gospels (Part Twelve)

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  Welcome to my 12 th post on the canonical gospels.   I am wrapping up my study on the Gospel of John with some concluding observations. Elements in John that are Historical : For much of the 19 th and 20 th centuries the gospel of John was considered by most scholars to be completely unhistorical.   It was so different theologically from the Synoptics that scholars dismissed it as mostly a work of fiction – not based on anything Jesus really said or did except in those few cases where the content overlapped the Synoptics. In the past 50 years that has been changing. Scholars now recognize that there are important historical elements in this gospel. New Testament scholar C.H. Dodd points out these elements in John that are most likely historical (C.H. Dodd, Historical Tradition and the Fourth Gospel , Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1963): 1.       The beginnings of Jesus’ ministry as an offshoot of the ministry of John the Baptist.   Only the Gospel of John records that A
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