All posts in Bible

  • September 5, 2015

    The Book of Revelation

    Ottheinrich_Folio287r_Rev4-5

    This week Group Publishing released the Jesus-Centered Bible — a study Bible in the New Living Translation. I wrote the introductions for Jonah, Matthew, Titus, and Revelation. Here’s the introduction I wrote for the book of Revelation.

    The Book of Revelation
    Brian Zahnd

    As a child growing up in church I didn’t always feel engaged by the sermon. On those occasions I would pull out the pew Bible and begin to read. And I always went to the same place — to the end of the Bible, to the mysterious book of Revelation. I was fascinated with its monsters and battles, its angels and demons, and its visions of heaven and hell that parade across the pages in the final installment of Christian Scripture. Like many others, I assumed I was reading some kind of un-deciphered code about the end times. I thought Revelation was a veiled foretelling of the geopolitical events of the late twentieth century.

    But I was mistaken.
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    10 Comments / Bible, Eschatology, Jesus /

  • February 12, 2015

    Jesus Is What God Has To Say

    >TRANSFIGURATION

    Jesus Is What God Has To Say
    Brian Zahnd

    One of the most mysterious aspects of the Transfiguration is the appearance of Moses and Elijah — these two giant figures from the Old Testament — conversing with a glorified Christ. Of course Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the Prophet are representative figures signifying the Law and the Prophets. On Mount Tabor, Moses and Elijah are summoned from the Old Testament past to give their final witness.

    The goal of the Law and the Prophets was to produce a just and worshipping society. Jesus and his kingdom is where that project finds its fulfillment. The new society formed around Jesus was what the Law and the Prophets were aiming for all along. The Transfiguration is where Moses and Elijah find their great successor. The Transfiguration is where the Old Testament hands the project of redemption over to Jesus. The Transfiguration is where the old witness (testament) yields to the new witness (testament.)

    But initially Peter misinterpreted what the presence of Moses and Elijah meant.

    Peter’s first impulse was to build three memorial tabernacles on Tabor, treating Moses, Elijah, and Jesus as approximate equals.

    But Peter’s idea received a strong rebuke when the voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him!”

    Jesus is the true and living Word of God. Jesus is what the Law and Prophets point toward and bow to. Jesus is what the Old Testament was trying to say, but could never fully articulate. Jesus is the perfect Word of God in the form of a human life. God couldn’t say all he wanted to say in the form of a book, so he said it in the form of Jesus. Jesus is what God has to say!
    Read more

    39 Comments / Bible, Jesus, Uncategorized, Violence /

  • May 6, 2014

    Jesus Trumps Biblicism: A Tale of Sticks and Stones

    Abstract-Artist-Lucie-Beardwood-Art-Painting

    Jesus Trumps Biblicism: A Tale of Sticks and Stones
    Brian Zahnd

    This morning I was reading Scripture. From the Old Testament I was reading Numbers and in the New Testament I was reading John. In Numbers chapter 15 we find this story…

    An Israelite guy was gathering sticks on the Sabbath. This was forbidden. The guy got caught and was taken into custody. Moses inquired of Yahweh what should be done. Yahweh told Moses that the guy had to be killed. So the stick-gathering Sabbath-breaker was taken outside the camp and stoned to death by the congregation of Israel. Sticks and stones. (Number 15:32–36)

    Next I read from the Gospel of John chapter 5. This is what happens…

    Jesus meets a guy who has been paralyzed for 38 years. Jesus tells the guy to take up his bed and walk. The man is healed, takes up his bed, and heads for home. But this was the Sabbath. And the guy gets busted for breaking the Sabbath. When the Judean Torah enthusiasts find out that it was Jesus who was behind all this Sabbath breaking, they are prepared to kill Jesus. (Like Moses did in the Bible.) John concludes the story like this…

    “This is why the Judeans were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’ This is why the Judeans were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” (John 5:16–18)

    Look at what we have here. In Numbers a guy gets caught picking up sticks on a Saturday and is stoned to death. The text tells us that Yahweh instructed Moses to do this. This is the Moses who spoke to God face to face. (Exodus 33:11)

    But in the prologue to his gospel John says this…

    “The Torah was given by Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only begotten God who is near the Father’s heart, he has made him known.” (John 1:17–18)
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    6 Comments / Bible, Christianity, Jesus, Violence /

  • February 17, 2014

    My Problem With the Bible

    My Problem With the Bible
    Brian Zahnd

    I have a problem with the Bible. Here’s my problem…

    I’m an ancient Egyptian. I’m a comfortable Babylonian. I’m a Roman in his villa.

    That’s my problem. See, I’m trying to read the Bible for all it’s worth, but I’m not a Hebrew slave suffering in Egypt. I’m not a conquered Judean deported to Babylon. I’m not a first century Jew living under Roman occupation.

    I’m a citizen of a superpower. I was born among the conquerors. I live in the empire. But I want to read the Bible and think it’s talking to me. This is a problem.

    One of the most remarkable things about the Bible is that in it we find the narrative told from the perspective of the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, the conquered, the occupied, the defeated. This is what makes it prophetic. We know that history is written by the winners. This is true — except in the case of the Bible it’s the opposite! This is the subversive genius of the Hebrew prophets. They wrote from a bottom-up perspective.
    Read more

    206 Comments / Bible, Kingdom /

  • January 1, 2014

    Scripture as Witness to the Word of God

    christsinai
    Scripture as Witness to the Word of God
    Brian Zahnd

    To begin with a few axiomatic thoughts on Christ and the Bible…

    The Bible is the word of God that bears witness to the Word of God — Jesus Christ.

    The Logos-Word became flesh — not a book.

    Jesus is God. The Bible is not.

    The Bible did not create the Heavens and Earth — the Word (Christ) did.

    We worship Jesus; we do not worship the Bible.

    The Bible is not a member of the Trinity.

    The Bible is not God. Jesus is God.

    The Bible is not perfect. (There are parts of it we now regard as obsolete; e.g. Levitical codes.)

    Christ is the perfection of God as a human being.

    What the Bible does infallibly is point us to Jesus Christ.

    There is one mediator between God and man…and it’s not the Bible.

    The Bible is the inspired witness to the true Word of God who is Jesus Christ.

    Now consider this…

    The first Sunday after Christmas the Gospel reading was John 1:1-18. As I heard the Gospel read it occurred to me that the role John the Baptist played as the divinely sent witness to the Light is precisely how we should view Scripture in relation to Christ. Allow me to reproduce the reading, but I will substitute John the Baptist with Holy Scripture.
    Read more

    3 Comments / Bible, Christianity, Violence /

  • September 18, 2013

    Reading the Bible Right

    Reading The Bible Right
    by Brian Zahnd

    (An old poem resurfaces. It’s best read aloud.)

    It’s a STORY
    We’re telling news here
    Keeping alive an ancient epic
    The grand narrative of paradise lost and paradise regained
    The greatest “Once upon a time” tale ever told
    The beautiful story which moves relentlessly toward—
    “They lived happily ever after”

    Never, never, NEVER forget that before its anything else it’s a story Read more

    8 Comments / Bible, Poetry /

  • March 9, 2009

    Brueggemann’s 19 Theses

    Walter Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar who has spent so much time studying the Old Testament prophets that he seems to have turned into one. He scares me. He’s the Steven King of the authors I read. I remember reading The Prophetic Imagination on a flight from India and writing in the margin, “I wish I hadn’t read this…but I have and I am now responsible.” Walter Brueggemann scares because I think he’s right—that our society is far more distorted than we have supposed. But in this time of economic catastrophe, when Bel bows, Nebo stoops and the false gods of Babylon are shown to be incapable of providing the peace and security they promise, we may be open to a critique of our idols that could lead us to the truly radical alternative of hope in the living God. My prophetic declaration concerning 2009 has been that it is a year of falling idols and rising hope. May it come to pass. So without commentary, other than to say I agree with this prophetic perspective, I offer to you my adaptation and modification of Walter Brueggemann’s 19 Theses..

    1. Everybody lives by a script—whether implicit or explicit.

    2. We get scripted through the process of nurture, formation and socialization, and it happens without our knowing it.

    3. The dominant script in our society is one of technological therapeutic military consumerism.

    4. That script enacted through advertising, propaganda and ideology, especially in the liturgies of television, promises to keep us safe and happy.

    5. That script has failed. The script of technological therapeutic military consumerism cannot make us safe or happy.

    Read more

    2 Comments / America, Bible, Church, Culture /

  • March 5, 2009

    Credo

    Credo.
    I believe.
    I believe the Bible.
    I believe in Holy Scripture inspired by God.

    By why?
    Why do I believe the Bible?

    I know very few Christians who can adequately answer this question. If they are challenged by a skeptic at work as to exactly why they believe the Bible they find themselves on uncomfortable ground; their hands break out in a sweat as they fumble for a defense. Perhaps they go home, dig out a Josh McDowell book , cram for the “test”, try to memorize a few apologetic facts, and then head back to work the next day ready to explain why they believe the Bible…based on the arguments they read and tried to memorize the night before.

    But the problem with this defense is that it is disingenuous. As true as the apologetic arguments for the veracity of Scripture may be, it is not why they believe the Bible. The truth is, they believed the Bible before they knew a single apologetic argument. I doubt that one in ten thousand Christians believes the Bible because of historical, archeological, textual, literary, philosophical evidence. They believe in the Bible for a completely different reason, though they probably have never consciously understood this reason.

    I believe the Bible because I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and because I believe in the Church.

    Here’s how it works… Read more

    No Comments / Apologetics, Bible, Church /
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