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Early in the morning, all the top priests and elders worked out their plans for killing Jesus. They tied Jesus and took him to Pilate. When Judas, who betrayed Jesus, saw that the Jews had condemned Jesus to death, he became consumed with regret. He …
WITH GOOD FRIDAY AROUND THE CORNER and preachers talking about the suffering and Crucifixion of Jesus, I thought some folks might appreciate a Jerusalem map that shows the sites in the Crucifixion story. The map is the featured photo with this …
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME on my way through paraphrasing the Book of Hebrews for the Casual English Bible. By the way, yesterday was the day I finished the beta edition of the New Testament. It’s all online and free to use. I saved Hebrews …
IT SEEMS LIKE A CRAZY WAY to start telling the story of Jesus. John introduced him as “the living Word of God” (John 1:1 Casual English Bible). What? Try picturing that in your head. It’s so much easier to picture him as a baby in a …
JESUS ON THE CROSS. That’s the first-known picture of Jesus, etched into a jasper oval about an inch long (30 mm), and probably worn on someone’s ring or as a necklace or bracelet. It dates to around a century and a half after the time of Jesus. So …
PARDON THE HIATUS. I’ve been scrambling to finish an Easter-season video before Easter. These Bible-background videos sap a tremendous amount of time out of me because I’m an internet-taught rookie. I have to google nearly everything but my face, …
TODAY, for the first time, I looked up the definition of a “troll.” I looked it up because someone posted a comment about my YouTube video What Romans said about crucifixion: “Wow, my friend, you somehow attracted a lot of trolls.” Troll: “A person …
Q Does it bother you that Paul calls Jesus a human? “There’s just one God. And there’s only one go-between for God and humans. That mediator is a human: Jesus the Messiah” (1 Timothy 2:5). A It’s a little unsettling for some Christians. They like to …
JESUS HELD A GRUDGE. I don’t know if that’s true. But I’m afraid that’s what it felt like. I was reading the story because I needed to paraphrase it for Mark, in the Casual English Bible. It’s a story in two snippets. Snippet one The family of Jesus …
ONE OF THE ODDEST stories in the Gospel of Mark is the tale of Jesus healing a deaf man who could hardly talk—and then asking him not to tell anyone. Really, Jesus? Why do you think Jesus asks the healed gent who could suddenly speak clearly to keep …
Q Bible experts debate what Jesus meant when he said he had to suffer before he could “enter into his glory” (see Casual English Bible footnote for Luke 24:26). Does this mean his resurrection? Does it mean getting to sit beside God in heaven? Those …
AS THEY LED JESUS TO HIS EXECUTION, they arrested a bystander named Simon of Cyrene, who had just come into town. They forced him to carry the cross of Jesus. By this time a huge crowd had started to follow the procession headed to the place of …
