Tag: history
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Pascha, Easter, and the Slow Separation of the Church from Israel Many Christians assume the split between the Church and the Jewish people happened early—almost immediately after Jesus. But history tells a much slower, more complicated story. In this article we will follow the development of Pascha—the early Christian observance of Jesus’ death and resurrection…
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When We Misread What We Don’t Understand There’s a peculiar phrase in an old American song that most of us have heard but few have ever really understood: “Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni.” At face value, it sounds like nonsense. What does pasta have to do with a…
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When Jesus declared, “There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2), He was not speaking into a quiet or uneventful time, but into the active Second Temple Period. Both the Gospels and Jewish sources remember the years surrounding His death as the beginning of a…
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The Not So “Silent Years” When we open the pages of the New Testament, we step into a world already in motion—a world shaped by centuries of history, struggle, faithfulness, and expectation. That world is what scholars call the Second Temple Period, and without understanding it, many parts of Scripture can feel disconnected or confusing.…