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Did you know that Jesus Christ was a racist? In a TikTok video, Reverend Brandan Robertson asserts that the Son of God used a racial slur. Robertson is an author, activist, public theologian, and the pastor of Missiongathering Christian Church in San Diego, California. This racist action supposedly takes place in Chapter 7 of the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus is sought out by a Syrophoenician woman in the district of Tyre. She begs Jesus to free her daughter from the demon that is possessing her. Robertson said that Jesus replied, “It’s not good for Me to give the children’s...

The first day of winter will bring a celestial delight. According to Rice University astronomer Patrick Hartigan, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer than they’ve been since the Middle Ages. The effect will create a “Christmas Star,” or “Star of Bethlehem.” 2020 can sure use it.Just after the sun sets on December 21, the winter solstice, the two planets will look like a double planet, or large star.“Alignments between these two planets are rather rare, occurring once every 20 years or so, but this conjunction is exceptionally rare because of how close the planets will appear to one another,” said...

Just after sunset on the evening of December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer together in Earth’s night sky than they have been since the Middle Ages, offering people the world over a celestial treat to ring in the winter solstice. Jupiter and Saturn have been approaching one another in Earth’s sky since the summer. From December 16-25, the two will be separated by less than the diameter of a full moon. Though the best viewing conditions will be near the equator, the event will be observable anywhere on Earth, weather-permitting. Hartigan said the planetary duo will appear...

“Messengers Marking Out the Messiah” (Mark 1:1-8) In centuries past, in lands where there were kings, when the king was about to go visit various parts of his realm, messengers would be sent out, heralds, to go ahead to each town and announce the soon arrival of that mighty monarch. “The king is coming! Everybody get ready! The king is on his way!” And the people would know what to do. They would clean up any trash littering their town. If there were potholes in the roads, those would get filled in. Got to have everything in order for the...

Six years ago, Dan Wallace announced in a debate with Bart Ehrman that a paleographer had dated a recently-found papyrus fragment of Mark to the first century. Since then, I’ve received many requests for updates, and I finally have one to give. The fragment has now been published, and there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that its official date is late second or early third century. Dan Wallace has written a post explaining what happened and offering an apology. Here’s a brief excerpt: In my debate with Bart, I mentioned that I had it on...

Mysteries and Paradoxes of Evangelization – A Meditation on a Passage from the Gospel of Mark By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn the Church throughout the world today, we are rightly more focused on evangelization. It is “job one,” and Jesus could not have been clearer: Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you (Matt 28:18-20).However, even as we become more serious and practical about effective ways of evangelization, we must also remember the...

"New technology that allows scientists to remove the glue from the masks of mummies without damaging the ink on the paper used to make the mask has yielded an exciting discovery: a piece of papyrus that may contain the oldest known copy of one of the gospels. The finding, a fragment of the Gospel of Mark, which dates back to the year 90, is one of several fascinating texts that archaeologists are discovering in the masks of mummies. This first-century gospel fragment was written on a sheet of papyrus that was later reused to create a mask that was worn...

The Gospel of Mark has been discovered written on a tiny fragment of ancient papyrus, found within a mummy mask. During the era when the mask was created, papyrus was expensive, and the religious text was reused to create the decorative wear for the mummy. This discovery could represent the oldest gospel text ever found by archaeologists. The oldest samples of Christian scripture date from the Second Century of the Common Era. Pharaohs and wealthy individuals were often adorned with mummy masks made of gold and precious materials. Masks for people from lower economic classes were often manufactured from papyrus,...

The mummy masks of ancient commoners are a treasure trove of classical and religious documents — Christian scripture, Phoenician histories, Greek poetry. While the rich and royal members of ancient Egyptian society were buried in mummy masks of flaked gold and other precious metals, common people were forced to construct theirs with recycled pieces of paper. Recently, archaeologists found what they believe to be the world’s oldest piece of scripture in the mask of mummy from the first century. Researchers say the new scrap of spiritual papyrus is a portion of the the Gospel of Mark, the second chapter of...

A text that may be the oldest copy of a gospel known to exist — a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that was written during the first century, before the year 90 — is set to be published. At present, the oldest surviving copies of the gospel texts date to the second century (the years 101 to 200). This first-century gospel fragment was written on a sheet of papyrus that was later reused to create a mask that was worn by a mummy. Although the mummies of Egyptian pharaohs wore masks made of gold, ordinary people had to settle...

DALLAS (BP) -- The seminary professor who surprised the academic world by saying a first-century fragment of Mark's Gospel had been found has released new information along with two new claims -- an early sermon on Hebrews and the earliest-known manuscripts of Paul's letters also have been discovered. Details about the finds will be published in an academic book in 2013, says Dallas Theological Seminary's Daniel B. Wallace, a New Testament professor. Wallace started the buzz on Feb. 1 when, during a debate with author and skeptic Bart Ehrman, he made the claim about the Mark fragment, which would be...

Not what it appears to be: the Archaic Mark LONDON. A clever bit of detective work by US scholars and scientists has proven that one of the jewels of the University of Chicago’s manuscript collection is, in fact, a skilled late 19th- or early 20th-century forgery. Although speculation as to the authenticity of the Archaic Mark codex has been rife for more than 60 years, prior to this definitive research many believed it was an early record (possibly as early as the 14th century) of the Gospel of Mark and the closest of any extant manuscript to the world’s oldest...

Dallas Theological Seminary professor Daniel B. Wallace has said that newly discovered fragments from the Gospel of Mark could be the oldest New Testament artifacts ever found and date from the first century A.D., or during the time of eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection. Wallace announced his findings at UNC Chapel Hill on Feb. 1, 2012, during a debate in front of 1,000 people, where he unveiled that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered – six of them he said were probably from the second century, and one of them, the Gospel of Mark, probably from the first. The...

When the story of Jesus known as The Gospel of Mark began to circulate as a written text in the ancient Mediterranean cities, it became engaged in a form of negotiation with the Roman imperial culture. A newly published dissertation from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) shows, however, that a European colonial heritage probably has caused biblical scholars to neglect the earliest Gospel's primary act of negotiation with its imperial context. Biblical scholar Hans Leander has investigated how Mark's Gospel was related to Rome's Empire when it began to circulate among the early Christians during the first century C.E. He...

Last week we witnessed Jesus' divine power at work on the forces of nature (Mark 4:37-41). Today's Gospel stories reveal his power over disease and death. In these powerful accounts, Jesus reminds us of the importance of faith. Nothing is possible without faith. On the way to Jairus' house (Mark 5), Jesus encounters interruptions, delays, and even obstacles along the road. The people in the passage transfer their uncleanness to Jesus, and to each Jesus bestows the cleansing wholeness of God. Let us consider for a moment each situation. The hemorrhaging woman Jesus' miraculous healing of this woman who...