This the­ol­ogy has been held by var­i­ous churches right from the early cen­turies. It says that God changed his mind and now all promises and bless­ings made to Israel go to the Church. Israel totally lost God’s favour and they have no place in God’s future plan as a nation, except as part of the Church.

This the­ol­ogy, how­ever, totally ignores the nature of covenants. (more…)

The story of the repen­tant crim­i­nal cru­ci­fied on Jesus’ side gives way to var­i­ous inter­pre­ta­tions. The debate is over where the comma should be placed in Jesus’ answer. Since in the ancient Greek text there were no point­ings, we may expect that it is the the­ol­ogy of the trans­la­tors that deter­mine the cor­rect ren­der­ing, or is it? What if we the con­text gives us a clue? (more…)

Here is a puz­zle you may want to think about.

In Judaism in effect betrothal was already a mar­riage, but with­out mov­ing in together. If such cou­ples wanted to break up, they had to go through the process of divorce.

Jews take bear­ing chil­dren very seri­ously because they believe it is their duty to ful­fill the com­mand “go forth and mul­ti­ply”, indeed, hav­ing less than two chil­dren is con­sid­ered sin for a Jew­ish fam­ily. Thus, the very hope of every Jew­ish women is hav­ing chil­dren, a num­ber of them.

Now, know­ing this we stand per­plexed at Mary’s ques­tion. (more…)

The Jew­ish hope all along was the mes­sianic age. They call it the “Olam Haba”, that is “the Age to Come”. It is the King­dom of God or more rev­er­ently, the King­dom of Heaven. (more…)

The tra­di­tional doc­trine of the vir­ginal con­cep­tion is taken for granted by most Chris­tians. They are unaware that the idea dis­qual­i­fies Jesus as the son of David through Solomon, from the tribe of Judah. Indeed, try­ing to prove to Jews, who are skilled in their ancient tra­di­tions, that Jesus qual­i­fies to the throne of the King­dom leads to utter fail­ure. (more…)