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Questions raised during Bible study, answered from the text
These studies grew out of questions asked during live Bible study sessions. A word in the Greek text, an apparent contradiction between the Gospels, a phrase in the Creed, a detail of Roman history — each one deserved more than a footnote. Each study stands alone and requires no prior series. They are written for anyone willing to follow a question wherever the text leads.
The world says seeing is believing. Mark's Gospel reverses the direction. Across three passages, Jesus refuses proof on demand, requires trust before the miracle, and rewards faith with sight. The Pharisees demand evidence and receive nothing. A bleeding woman, a grieving father, and a blind beggar trust the Word first — and each receives everything.
When Joseph of Arimathea asks Pilate for Jesus' remains, all four Gospels use the dignified word soma — except Mark. Mark 15:45 switches to ptoma, a blunt word meaning "a fallen thing," used elsewhere in Mark only for the headless corpse of John the Baptist. One word. Two Gospel writers. The difference between horror and honor — and why both are true.
The dying thief asked only to be remembered at some unknown future date. Jesus answered with four Greek words that constitute one of the most concentrated statements of the Gospel in the entire New Testament. Amēn. Sēmeron. Met' emou. Paradeisō. Truly. Today. With me. In paradise. Every word is doing theological work.
Jesus told the Twelve they would not finish their tour of Israel’s towns “before the Son of Man comes.” Skeptics call this a failed prophecy. The Greek calls it something else entirely. Matthew uses two distinct words for two distinct kinds of coming: parousia for the final royal arrival at the Last Day, and erchomai for God’s temporal visitations in judgment. This study examines four interpretations and explains why the judgment that fell in AD 70 is the most compelling answer.
The famous agapē vs. phileō sermon teaches that Jesus uses the high divine love word and Peter can only manage the lower human affection word. It is a beautiful sermon. John 5:20 uses phileō for the Father’s love for the Son, and John 20:2 uses it for the disciple whom Jesus loved. The distinction collapses under John’s own usage. The real power of the scene lies elsewhere: in the charcoal fire, the three confessions answering three denials, and the absolution Peter never earned.
The word translated “dress” in John 21:18 is zōnnymi: to gird, to bind around, to fasten with a belt. It appears in the New Testament only three times, and all three times it belongs to Peter. In the imperfect tense it describes Peter’s youth, when he dressed himself and went where he pleased. In the future tense Jesus says another will gird him and lead him where he does not wish to go. To be girded by another in the ancient world meant one of two things: a slave dressed by a master, or a prisoner bound by his executioner. John removes all ambiguity in the next verse.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke say the Last Supper was a Passover meal on Thursday night. John seems to put the Passover a day later. The apparent contradiction dissolves once two Greek words — pascha and paraskeue — are read the way a first-century reader would have read them. This is a word problem, not a date problem.
Mark says Jesus was crucified at the third hour. John places the trial at the sixth. The two accounts are not in conflict — they are rounding in different directions within a timekeeping system that had no clocks and no minutes. Understanding Roman horae and the four night vigiliae resolves the apparent gap and reveals why the Gospel writers chose the hours they did.
In the oldest manuscripts, Mark's Gospel ends mid-breath: ephobounto gar — "for they were afraid." No risen Christ appears. No Great Commission. The women flee and say nothing. The manuscript evidence for the shorter ending is examined here, along with the argument that the abrupt stop is not a broken text. It is a deliberate theological challenge to every reader.
The other side of the evidence. While two famous 4th-century manuscripts omit the longer ending of Mark, the vast majority of the manuscript tradition includes it. Irenaeus quoted it as Scripture around AD 150. The Lutheran Confessions cite it as foundational doctrine. This study examines the case for receiving Mark 16:9–20 as the authoritative Word of God.
Every Sunday many congregations confess that Christ "descended into hell" — a phrase absent from the earliest baptismal creeds and not fixed in the Apostles' Creed until the 8th century. This study traces the history of the clause, examines the four scriptural passages behind it, presents Luther's 1533 Torgau sermon, and lays the four competing interpretations side by side: Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Reformed, and the rejected second-chance reading.
On Easter evening, Christ breathed on his disciples and spoke a word found nowhere else in the New Testament: enephysēsen, the same verb used in Genesis 2 when God breathed life into Adam. With that breath, he instituted the Office of the Keys. This study traces the Aramaic behind Matthew’s binding-and-loosing and John’s forgiving-and-retaining, lays out the two keys, answers Rome’s “erring key,” and explains why the Greek future perfect tense means heaven has already decided.
The Psalter has at least seven identified contributors, including Asaph, the Sons of Korah, Moses, and an anonymous majority of roughly fifty psalms. Yet the entire collection bears the name of one king. This study explains why, traces Luther’s description of the Psalter as “a little Bible,” and follows the Reformers’ argument that the Psalms are the prayer book of Christ himself — every lament and every cry of abandonment prayed by the Son on behalf of the whole human race.