Some people read Galatians as an anti-Jewish letter, but the key to understanding Paul's message is rooted in the Galatian context. Galatian gentile believers wanted to be circumcised to become Jews. They felt that would give them something that they otherwise did not have, but Paul tried to dissuade them.

How is the message about a God who made covenants with a particular people in a particular land move into the gentile world? This was a perplexing issue for the early church, and the early Jewish leaders used the book of Leviticus to help solve the problem. The Apostle Paul

The role of the prophet is not to predict what is to come, but to speak into their present moment, so how does Revelation fit into the prophetic category? We also discuss how the author uses imagery to connect the dots between the ideas of a suffering Messiah and a

Have you been fascinated by the Book of Revelation but felt that something must be missing in modern interpretations of this anti-Roman, Jewish document? In this week's episode, we explore what books like Enoch or Baruch or what geography and the Torah have to do with interpreting the book of

What is apocalyptic literature, and how does it change the way we read Revelation? What were the cultural developments that birthed the apocalyptic genre, and is that genre a Greco-Roman or Jewish style of literature? This week we talk about the overall context of Revelation and why pop culture has

> Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire? > Corrie Ten Boom Steering0:00/1:281×This saying may sound like a cliche, but you have to consider who said these words. If you have never heard of Corrie Ten Boom, she was a Dutch Christian woman who hid many

> "Good people do not need laws to act responsibly and bad people will find a way around those laws." > Plato Good people do not need laws...0:00/1:311×Many people think that the laws and rules exist only to limit us. And that is partly true. But many

> “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” > Pablo Picasso Learn the rules...0:00/0:591×Rules are not bad by default. Some rules should not be broken unless we wish to face some dire consequences. But Pablo Picasso was right, some rules

Are the Essenes the same people as the Jewish Qumran Sect? And who are the Zealots and why does Josephus dislike them so much? Pinchas Shir helps us better understand the diverse beliefs among the Jews during the Second Temple Period. Stay tuned till the end of the episode when

We start with the Hasidim and discuss how the Pharisees emerged from this group. While the Sadducees were Temple-focused, the Pharisees were purity-in-life focused. They were an of-the-people-for-the-people kind of group scattered throughout the diaspora. Pinchas Shir helps us understand how the Pharisees used Scripture and why they seem to

This conversation comes from a small part of the IBC course titled Jews and Greeks on Life and the Afterlife. Yeshaya Gruber, Nicholas Schaser, Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg, and Pinchas Shir discuss the ways Greeks thought in a completely different manner than the Jews. Learn more about Jewish and Greek concepts of

How does Jesus earn the title rabbi? What does that mean about the responsibility of the students? What are the early rabbinic sources that help us understand Jesus' role? Dive deeper into the material by registering for The Stories of Jewish Christ: Among the Rabbis. Israel Bible Podcast is hosted

On the table is a discussion about the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds and the difference between Midrash and Halacha. We also discuss what teaching techniques Jesus had that were similar to other rabbis and what happens to the role of Rabbi once the Jerusalem temple was destroyed. Israel Bible Podcast

What was Judaism like in the Second Temple period? It was diverse. Very diverse. This week Pinchas Shir tells us about where that diversity came from and why we only talk about four of the more than ten divisions of Judaism from that time. We end up focusing on the