In terms of ‘greatest hits’ of the Gospels, this passage has to be in the top ten. The Good Shepherd who lays his life down for his sheep? Wonderfully evocative language and imagery, a sure fire hit ..read more

The question arises because at least since Newton’s seventeenth-century time, science has increasingly claimed to be able to provide all the answers to all the questions about life, even though the history of science is a perpetual laying down of old certainties in favour of new developments in knowledge. At about the same time as Newton, the French philosopher Descartes was proposing that life was dualistic; there was the obvious physical world and the less obvious but equally real mental or spiritual world, and the two worlds were quite separate (dualism ..read more

One theory about the four gospels is that they represent different (early) Christian communities. John’s gospel, then, would have been written for a particular Christian group, probably around about 70 years, ish, after Jesus’ death. The way it is written and the stories it contains, are, according to this way of thinking, designed to speak directly to the people of the ‘John community ..read more

After the stories of Jesus death come those of his resurrection. In these accounts we find the material which, for some, confirm the divinity of Christ, and for others confirm the unreliability of the text ..read more

The major Christian festivals have various things in common, one of them is that they are based on stories which seem to stretch credulity ..read more

There are some passages which just seem to deliberately create problems. Passages which contradict or at least ‘muddy the waters’ of other passages. This is one of them ..read more

People who, frankly, know a lot more about the New Testament than I do sometimes take issue with my view that the mission of Jesus was a profoundly political one. Their well researched views notwithstanding though, it’s astonishingly hard for me to see Jesus role as apolitical – particularly when you look at events such as those detailed in version of the “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem as detailed by “Mark ..read more

Part of the genius of ‘Mark’ and/or the later translators of his work is the superbly quotable nature of of some of his passages, including this one. “Get behind me, Satan” or, if you prefer, “Get thee behind me, Satan” is such a great phrase. It bleeds through to culture in every moment we are faced with a big temptation ..read more

It was over thirty years ago when I was exploring the possibility of offering for the ordained ministry in the Methodist Church. Wesley College, in Bristol, (now closed) was holding a residential weekend for people such as myself, so I went along. It was while I was there that someone suggested that I read ‘Freeing the Faith’, by Revd Hugh Dawes, which back then was hot off the press ..read more

This week we hear an account from ‘John’ of Jesus in the temple. This story is told by all four evangelists, but there is one key difference between the the synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and John’s version: In John 2: 16 Jesus says that the traders are making the temple ‘a ’. In the synoptics the phrase is often given as a ‘den of thieves’. One is a legitimate economic hub, the other is illegitimate ..read more