Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
The student of Scripture should always have a map open next to their Bible as they read. If possible, they should also travel to Israel, not to make a pilgrimage, but to see the context of the land in which these stories took place. These are not fairy tales made up about fictional fantasy lands; these are stories about real people in real places interacting with a real God.

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Children are not meant to carry crowns. They are not meant to rule. The burden crushes them in slow, invisible ways.
Jesus is very difficult to bring down. That’s the power of it.
Instead of a “how-to” manual, the Bible is a “what-you-didn’t-do” story.
The one who delights in the law of the Lord learns to fear his own good works and trust God outside of them.
When the Law is viewed in its true light, when its "glory" is revealed, it is found to do nothing more than to kill man and sink him into condemnation.
God’s design in the Law is to enable man to know himself; to perceive the false and unjustified state of his heart; to discover how far he is from God and to disdain his own goodness.
Aquinas would craft a systematic theology that did with the matter of faith what Aristotle had done with the natural world.
Our certainty is of Christ, that mighty hero who overcame the Law, sin, death, and all evils.
There is one verse in the Bible that talks about tattoos. In this article, Chad Bird explores the original Hebrew of that verse to see what light it sheds, looks at the verse in context, and discusses what application--if any--this verse has for Christians today.
While these are familiar words to us, frequently they are dealt with in ways that fail to take into account the context and the situation.
When we stop looking to Christ in faith, we are walking in sin. Anything (including our supposed law-keeping) that does not proceed from faith is sin.
Different groups within Christianity disagree as to whether Jesus should be depicted in icons, crucifixes, paintings, or other visual media. In this article, Chad Bird approaches the question from the angle of both the commandments and the incarnation.