Father Henry Wansbrough (1934 – ) offered this comment on the Universalis App January 1, 2026: “At a certain stage, in the 1960’s, there was a great tendency to translate the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) as ‘happy are the poor in spirit’ etc. But God’s blessing does not mean ‘happiness’ […]
Category: Bible
Wisdom Bible Books
This post is a change of emphasis from Catholic Theology to a Bible study. The Catholic Church classifies six or seven Bible books as Wisdom Books. The Catholic Study Bible, Second Edition, includes Psalms with the comment that Psalms is “often associated” with the Wisdom books. I have not included Psalms in this list of […]
Truth and Love
It is unfortunate that the 21st Century meanings of truth and love do not do justice to the important ancient Greek and Hebrew words translated as truth and love in most English Bibles. Now we tend to talk easily of scientific truth, religious truth, and personal truth, giving the most weight to scientific truth but […]
8 – Bible Love
The English word Love has no deep 21st century meaning. We love our spouses, God, Jesus, golf, football, beaches, mountains, cars, and peanut butter. In English translations of the Bible, love is a very common word. It occurs about 500 times in the Old Testament and about 200 times in the New Testament depending on […]
7 – More on Sola Scriptura
The Protestant Reformation was a rebellion against some positions and practices of the 1500-year-old Christian Church which had been described as catholic or universal since the second century. The use of Roman Catholic Church as the official name became common after the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church today, with about 1.4 billion members, still considers […]
Old Testament Wisdom Books
The Great Courses offers hundreds of on-line courses featuring skilled professors exploring a wide variety of subjects. We recently stumbled on a course entitled Reading Biblical Literature. The skilled professor/lecturor is Dr. Craig Koester. We have been enjoying one of these lectures most evenings during Lent. Below are the apps leading to free access on […]
Dramatizing the Old Testament
The Main Point – House of David Just to get to the point early, the main point of this post is to recommend a new eight-episode series, House of David, available on Amazon Prime. The Free Press describes the series as “a beautiful corrective to a lie that’s seeped into American culture: that Christians see […]
Bible Punch Lines
Bible verses read without pertinent context may be misleading. Sometimes, important verses are at the end of a passage and might be surprising, like a punch to the nose, not making us laugh like a punch line to a joke, but hitting us with simple statements of theological truth! Consider these two verses: Bible Punch […]
Herod, Herod, Herod, Herod, Herod, and Herod
Yes, there are six Herods in the New Testament. I’m not sure that has any theological significance, but does have some historical significance with respect to getting things in the right order and understanding who did what. And it may have some value in trivia game competition and crossword puzzle solving. I started out to […]
John 3:16 – Gospel in a Nutshell…with Context
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. – John 3:16 King James Version (KJV) Importance of Context Richer understanding of these beautiful, encouraging, and famous words from the Gospel of St. John results from consideration of context, an essential […]