Category: Biblical Studies
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The Star of Bethlehem or the Star of Jacob? A Forgotten Prophecy
by Rev. Dr. Eugen J. Pentiuc This essay was first published on the website of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Nearly every year during the Nativity season printed journals and articles posted online flood us with the same resounding question: “What Was the Star of Bethlehem?” Among the four canonical gospels, Matthew is the […]
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Christmas’s Great Conjunction
by John Fotopoulos | български | ქართული | Ελληνικά | Русский | Српски There has been a lot of excitement this December regarding an astronomical phenomenon known as a great conjunction. This great conjunction, also known as a planetary conjunction, is an alignment of Jupiter and Saturn with Earth that is visible in our night sky. A great conjunction of Jupiter […]
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The Apocalypse, and the Wisdom that Comes from Trauma
by Very Rev. Dr. Isaac Skidmore | български | Ελληνικά | Русский On the strength of anecdotal evidence, I’m convinced people are now especially interested in apocalyptic themes. Social unrest, fires, climate change, a global pandemic—all of these evoke themes found in apocalyptic texts from numerous traditions. Christianity has its own narrative of what will […]
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Was Mary, the Mother of Jesus, the First Person to See the Risen Lord Outside the Empty Tomb?
by John Fotopoulos | ελληνικά | Română | српски In Orthodox icons of Jesus’s empty tomb and resurrection, it is common to see Mary the mother of Jesus depicted as one of the myrrhbearing women. A related theme, although perhaps depicted less frequently in icons, is that the Virgin Mary saw the risen Jesus outside […]
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The Orthodox Monk-Archaeologist who Discovered a Crucified Man
by Nicolae Roddy As a follow-up to my recent article “Where are the Orthodox Biblical Archaeologists?” it seems timely to present the fascinating story of the single greatest exception to the rule: Vassilios Tzaferis, the Greek Orthodox monk-turned-archaeologist who discovered the material remains of the only crucified man ever found. Tzaferis was born to a […]
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“How Are You Feeling?” An Approach to Reading the Scriptures
by Rev. Dr. Cristofor Panaitescu After struggling for years longing for the ultimate way of understanding the Bible, I finally concluded that my struggling would have no end. I understood also that there was no ultimate way, but just a way. Watching television testimonies today often means hearing how people feel in different situations of […]
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Where Are the Orthodox Biblical Archaeologists?
by Nicolae Roddy An unshakable question has been clinging to the bottom of my shoe for all of twenty years now. As co-director and area supervisor for the Bethsaida Archaeology Project I have been actively involved in overseeing excavations and writing reports at the site generally accepted as the ancient Galilean village where Jesus of […]
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The Mythology of the “Historical Present”
by David Bentley Hart I should not take exception, I suppose, if critics occasionally question my choice to render all Greek present tense verbs as English present tense verbs in my recent translation of the New Testament. The same choice was made, as it happens, by Tyndale and by his successors on the committee of […]