Episode 262: Pete Enns & Jared Byas - Pete & Jared Aren’t Trying to Ruin Christmas (This Time)

B4NP Podcast

Dec 17

Written By

Join us for the final episode of The Bible for Normal PeopleSeason 7 as Pete and Jared end the year on an easy note by tackling the cultural, historical, and societal context of the birth of Jesus as found in the Bible. Join them as they explore the following questions:

What does the Bible say about the virgin birth?
How do scholars wrestle with the topic of Jesus’s birth?
What context are we looking at when we're talking about the virgin birth?
Are there parts of the Bible that aren't affected by historical context?
Which Gospels recount the virgin birth? Other books or authors?
Do scholars think Jesus had an earthly father?
Why would Jesus saying God is his father mean anything more than when Christians say God is their father?
What does Psalm 2 tell us about the birth of Jesus?
Are you alone in your opinion if you think Jesus had an earthly father?
What does Isaiah 7 have to say about the virgin birth?
How does the Greco Roman context play into the narrative being told about Jesus’s birth?
What’s a Priene calendar and how does it relate to the Bible?
What are the takeaways from this conversation around the birth story of Jesus for how we read the Bible?

Tweetables

Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.

“The two earliest sources we have for the story of Jesus don't mention a virgin birth.”@theb4np
“We have to remember that Paul dies probably before any of the Gospels are written, certainly before Matthew and Luke.”@theb4np
“At the very least, we have a different perspective in Paul than we have in Matthew and Luke.”@theb4np
“Jesus was Jewish, albeit in a Greco Roman world, but he was still Jewish. And what might these things have meant back then?”@theb4np
“In the first, second, third centuries, people were reading this text and weren't concluding that Jesus was born of a virgin in this abstract sense or this biological sense.”@theb4np
“Jesus is a David figure. Absolutely. There's no question. And what does this Messiah figure do? He rescues the people from the oppression of others.”@theb4np
“I think it's disingenuous for scholars, or for people who have been educated in these things, to come to theological conclusions without taking these factors into consideration.”@theb4np
“The biblical writers were interpreting Jesus for their time—and differently than Mark did, and differently than John did, and differently than Paul did.”@theb4np
“There's no part of the Bible that can responsibly escape an engagement of history, and that includes Jesus.”@theb4np
“The Bible is constrained by tradition and by culture and that's not a bug, but a feature.”@theb4np
“It's one thing confessing the incarnation. It's another thing to say, ‘and I know exactly how it works.’”@theb4np
“I think the gospel writers were trying to get at something that they believed, and they used the language of their time to do it.”