The Jewish Studies Blog

The very act of crowning someone king over Israel is a symbolic act of enormous proportions within Israel’s narrative history. It signified receiving the authority of Israel’s God Himself to rule over Israel and to exercise authority over the nations of the world with the power and the confidence that come from being God’s own son. So while there are other aspects to Jesus’ sonship that should be taken into account when constructing one’s theology, we must keep in mind that the most important aspect must remain – royal authority over all things created.

Literally the translation of the first “own” in vs. 11 from the Greek should be rendered as “He came to his own things.” The Greek word is in fact in neuter plural, and therefore cannot in anyway refer to the Jewish people or any people for that matter. It most probably refers to “the world” in vs. 10 that proceeds vs.11 (… the world was made through him, yet the world did not receive him.) The second “own” in vs. 11 can in fact refer to the Jewish people, but does not have to, since it can simply refer to humanity rejecting God’s Kingship. The traditional interpretation argues against the logical and simple flow of text (line of thought) in John’s narrative. If one is careful to distinguish the genders used by the author, the first “own” is neuter and the second “own” is masculine, then the traditional interpretation may be not as certain as previously thought.

This fresh book argues that the four Gospels are closely based on eyewitness testimony of those who knew Jesus. Noted New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham challenges the prevailing assumption that the accounts…

Scattered throughout the Talmud, the founding document of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, can be found quite a few references to Jesus–and they’re not flattering. In this lucid, richly detailed, and accessible…

Since this commentary is concentrating only on relevant Jewish contextual background issues, we are purposefully avoiding all other insightful comments that most other commentaries address. Suffice it to say that many of the names, including John, come to the New Testament from Greek manuscripts of the Gospel. Sometimes the Greek manuscripts do actually refer to Greek names such as Timothy (Timotheus, which means honored by God) or Andrei (Andreas, which simply means man or manly). But other times, names like Mathew were in fact common Jewish, Hebrew names. These names were Hellenized and Latinized before arriving in our English Bibles. As an example, Mathew (Matthaios/Matthaeus) was Mattiyahu (which in Hebrew means gift of God).