Dear friends - Please take 10 minutes to watch this personal update from me:

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:

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!

Hi folks,

When I was putting together my list of how to read the rest of the NT chronologically, I now realize that I left out the Letter to the Hebrews!

As you know, in the early and medieval Church there was a debate over whether St. Paul wrote this, and whether it should be included among his letters. Since most scholars do not include Hebrews among the letters of Paul, I had left it off my chronology of Paul's life. If he did write it, we don't know when - but I suspect that if he wrote it, it would have his name on it. In any case, it has to have been written before 70 AD because it speaks of the temple sacrifices as ongoing, and Clement of Rome quotes it in 1 Clement a couple decades later. So I would put Hebrews either with James (after the prison epistles of Paul) or with Peter's letters (after the pastoral epistles of Paul). I'm not saying that I think James or Peter wrote it, but they would be interesting candidates for authorship.

And if you want a couple short, but ...

If you wanted to read the rest of the New Testament (after the gospels) in chronological order, interspersed with the book of Acts, this PDF gives you the order in which to read everything. There are a few books for which specific dates are unknown, and as you know, other scholars might have a different way of working this out - but it does work, and the math checks out (see the other PDF, the chronology of St. Paul's life, which I will post after this). And if you find any problems to be corrected or you have something to add, please let me know!

I made this during my PhD program, so about 30 years ago, but I think it holds up - still, please let me know if you see anything you want to nuance or question. I have Paul being executed in 64 or 65, but my latest research suggests that 67 or even early 68 might be more accurate. Also, to the question of whether Paul was martyred before Peter or after him, the evidence suggests Peter was martyred first, but Peter's comments about Paul's letters being Scripture feels to me like Paul was already dead when Peter wrote that. Legends that they were martyred together were created to overcome an apocryphal story that they had had a falling out, but that's not really true.

Jim