Pisteuomen - πιστευομεν - T. Michael W. Halcomb

My last two posts have focused on both the “ time of day ” that Jesus was crucified and the actual “ day ” of His crucifixion. In this post, I want to piggyback on some of my thoughts there and think here, about the religious leaders and two of their hesitancies: 1) Their fear of riots (Mk. 14.2) and, 2) Their fear of not being able to participate in Passover events (Jn. 18.28). It is my contention that if we can square these two passages, the things that I have said so far, become even clearer. Here are the two passages: Mk. 14.2 says: “For they said, ‘But not during the Feast or the crowds may riot.’” Jn. 18.28 says: “…But it was morning and they did not want to enter into the Praetorium in order that they did not become ceremonially unclean (for) they wanted to eat the Passover." In these two passages, the players are the same: the Jewish religious officials. While they have two concerns (mentioned above), these concerns focus on the same thing: Passover Week. Now, I have argue...

As many New Testament scholars have pointed out, those from the New Testament era and more specifically, the non-Roman Elite of the NT era, understood “time” differently. Bruce Malina, for instance, has repeatedly shown that while 21st century Americans are predominantly future-oriented people (e.g. retirement funds, savings accounts, planning for education, hoping to get married, waiting to have kids, etc.), those we read of in the NT were quite the opposite—these agricultural and usually lower class personages were present-minded folk. In fact, Malina has argued that no NT personage could have possibly had a future orientation similar to that of a 21st century American. For the sake of argument and belaboring, I will say here that this is a view I, for the most part, share (I say “most part” because I certainly have not done away with the “already, not yet” aspect so apparent in the NT documents). As Cadbury has pointed out, the NT word “hora” (English “hour”) is only attested to one...