In The Journey, we will be going through the four gospels concurrently - all four at the same time, reading parallel passages side by side. But here's the tricky part: No gospel writer ever claimed to be putting down the story in a strictly chronological order. The gospels are not, for the most part, chronological narratives, but they are anecdotal compilations of the things Jesus said and did. In other words, it's like the way you might tell people about your vacation - you don't start at the beginning and tell the whole story at once, beginning to end. You tell individual stories about things that happened, and one story reminds you of the next, even if they didn't happen one right after the other. For the gospels, the thread through them is theological and thematic, not strictly chronological. Of course there are things that happen at the beginning (Jesus' birth, baptism, temptation) and there are things that happen at the end (his passion, resurrection, post-resurrection appearances). But in between that, it's more thematic. Having said that, the closest thing we get to a chronological narrative is the Gospel of John, with a ministry that covers what appears to be 3 years, or going through 3 Passovers (the other gospels present the story in a kind of compressed form as if the whole story is Jesus on the way to Jerusalem for his passion).
So we are going to follow the rough chronology in the Gospel of John, putting the other gospel sections into the chronology where they would go in a "beginning-to-end" story, which means the stuff from Matthew, Mark, and Luke will often not come to us in the order they give it to us. But trust me, it will all make sense as a historical narrative. So a high level outline for the gospels will look something like this, and these are the sections we will follow through:
1) Prologue to Jesus' ministry (up through his temptation)
2) Year 1A: Galilee
3) Year 1A: Judea (ends with the arrest of John baptizer - Jesus leaves Judea)
4) Year 1B: Galilee
5) Year 1B: Judea (ends with the execution of John - Jesus leaves Judea)
6) Year 2: Galilee
7) Year 2: Judea (ends with Jesus finding out there's a price on his head, and - you guessed it - Jesus leaves Judea - it's not time for his passion yet)
8) Year 3: Jerusalem (including the passion, resurrection, etc.)
Down the road, when we finish the gospels, we will go through the book of Acts, interspersing the New Testament letters into the story chronologically, so we'll go through the rest of the NT (and beyond) chronologically by year, based on what we know about the early Church. And that's the plan!
I'm back, up and running, and ready to go - I should have a new JOURNEY episode within the next week or so - and because you are my loyal peeps, here is an exclusive, just-for-you, behind the scenes SNEAK PEEK into my new office:
This was for March 24th, recorded for the Ascension App
Thanks for your patience - here is our next installment of The Journey - it's session # 96, but I'm also calling it PART 1 of a "miniseries" on John chapter 6.
Whoever watches it first, please let me know if it looks good or if there are any problems with it - I get through the first two sections of the text on the feeding of the 5,000.
Enjoy!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
Here's Matt Walsh's take on it - he says what I'm thinking...
if you watch this, I'd love to hear your thoughts
So here are the verses I look at to check whether a Bible translation is a good one:
These are mostly in the NT, but with regard to the OT, I don't want a Bible to minimize the phrase "Son of Man" so for me a Bible cannot render "son of man" or even "one like a son of man" in Daniel 7:13 as something like "human being" - that's a paraphrase and while it may convey the correct meaning for SOME OT passages, it does not convey the correct meaning for all of them, and you lose the connection to Jesus' own self-identification as the Son of Man in the NT, especially in Matthew 16:13-15.
Matthew 6:7 - better not say "vain repetition" or imply that repeated prayers are bad - Jesus was criticizing going on and on extemporaneously, not memorized prayers. The word "vain" is nowhere in the Greek!
1 Cor 11:2, and 2 Thess 2:15, 3:6 - better not render the word "teachings" just to avoid the positive connotation for tradition(s), especially if Col 2:8, which has a negative connotation (human traditions) is...
I've seen some YouTube posts lately by some of the Catholic apologists, apparently talking about the best Bible translations (and/or offering rebuttals to Protestant videos on the same topic). I don't actually watch these videos, mind you, because I'm not interested in entering into any debates over it (and I suspect a lot of it has to do with the deuterocanonical books anyway, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a non-issue, since the Church fathers DID read them, and Jesus DID quote them), but as you know, I do have my favorite translations, and some that I feel pretty strongly are no good. In the early days of the Original Church videos, I did a video about this, and I talked about how I have certain test verses, that I use to check a translation. I'll post my video and my test verses later, in case you want to refresh your memory.
For now, those of you who have been following The Journey from the beginning know that when I started, I was using the NABRE as my starting point (and then ...
