Prime Matters

In the city of Bethlehem, Joseph's ancestral home and the place to he and Mary had been called for a census, the Christ-child was born. His humble beginnings are well-known, having been born in a stable, unnoticed. Still, angels were soon sent to a small band of shepherds, proclaiming the good news of the first Christmas. The promised Messiah had come. While the word "myth" has come to mean "untru...

What does it really mean for God to have become incarnate? Why was it so necessary for Jesus to take on human flesh? How was his doing so a particular response to the problem of human guilt and shame? Here we pause to consider the real meaning of the Incarnation and its pertinence to the transformation of human beings into godlike creatures, worthy of entrance into the life of the Trinity –  ...

The narrative continues in Nazareth of Galilee, where Mary, a young Jewish girl set aside by God from the moment of her Immaculate Conception,  met with great astonishment the angel Gabriel: “Hail, Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with you.” She was told that she would bear the Son of God, a son to be named Emmanuel, “God is with us,” who was to be the long-awaited Messiah-King, the Savior of...

The destruction of the temple and the end of the Davidic kingly line marked the beginning of the time of the “diaspora,” when Jews would be scattered across many lands. Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Syria became major centers of Jewish life, and local synagogues took on new importance in Jewish communities. During this time, the Jewish longing for the Messiah took on growing intensity, urged...

Renowned for his wisdom, Solomon ruled over a kingdom finally at peace, allowing him to build a new Jewish temple on Mount Zion. Within it resided the Holy of Holies, which housed the Ark of the Covenant, and priests descended from Aaron offered sacrifices there while the tribe of Levi kept it in working order. Solomon, however, would succumb to the irreligious forces around him, even as God raise...

Even after the Israelites were firmly established in the Promised Land, they had yet to conquer the Canaanite peoples. In the years that followed, tribal leaders such as Samuel, Jephthah, Gideon, Deborah, and Barak would rise up to defend the Israelites from the paganism around them. But it was ultimately David who was led down the road to kingship, following his heroic victory over the Philistine...

Having entered into a covenant with God, the Israelites begin to make their way to Canaan, the Land of Promise. Their journey would take forty years, led by Moses, his brother Aaron, his sister Miriam, and his lieutenant Joshua. The Israelites would be supplied with the gift of manna along the way, led by fire and cloud, and yet they were afflicted with discouragement and near rebellion for the wh...

After the Israelites fled Egypt, Pharaoh reconsidered his decision to release them. On the edge of the Red Sea, the Israelites looked back to see the Egyptian army coming down upon them, setting the scene for one of Moses’s great miracles: the parting of the Red Sea. Moses would lead the Chosen People to Mount Sinai, where he would speak to God as if face to face, and where God would give him the...

An Israelite of the tribe of Levi, raised as a member of the Egyptian royal family but exiled for murder, Moses unexpectedly encounters God in the desert. The Lord speaks to him from the burning bush in Exodus, revealing his name to be "I Am." Sent to Pharaoh to demand the Israelites’ freedom, Moses would initiate a great drama: the plagues that would befall Egypt, the institution of the Passover...

After cleverly seizing their father’s inheritance from his brother Esau, Jacob would carry on God’s blessings to His Chosen People. It was Jacob who would be given the name “Israel,” and it was Jacob, too, who would become the father of twelve sons and the patriarch of their descendants, the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Jacob showed clear favoritism toward one of his sons, Joseph, to the ire of his ot...

Christians have long deemed Abraham the “Father of Faith,” and here we consider why. It was through Abraham that God promised to bring about a great nation, offspring who would impact the whole world through the ages to come. Abraham’s became a story of learning to trust in that promise and in the Lord who had given it, most notably through the near-sacrifice of Isaac, the firstborn son of his wif...

Our narrative begins now to center on a most unique people: the ancient Jews. The Israelites, God’s Chosen People, the Children of Abraham, would serve as those through whom God would begin to work out the redemption of the human race. So who were the Jewish people? Why did God choose them? How did they respond? In what ways do they serve as types for all of us? Here we suggest how Israel’s story...

Human nature continues to grapple with the consequences of original sin, from the time of the Fall to the first murder of Abel by Cain and even on into our present age – in our seemingly insatiable yet unfulfilled longing for happiness, in our anguish in suffering, in our loneliness and heartbreak. God, too, regretted the evil that had entered creation. In Genesis 6 we read the story of Noah, the...

Adam and Eve would not withstand the test of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In Genesis 3, we read that Eve took of its fruit and ate, giving some to Adam who ate of it, as well. Thus original sin entered the world, bringing sin and darkness, pain and suffering, and toil and shame. Their minds and wills would now be drawn to such disorder as the seven deadly sins, moved by the mark of...

One of the highest honors given to the human race was the freedom to choose: Adam and Eve could choose to serve and obey God and receive their happiness in return, or they could follow Lucifer’s lead, refusing humility before their Creator. The Devil, hoping for their fall, was not content to sit back and allow events to play out as they would. At the center of the Garden of Eden stood the Tree of...

At the heart of God's creation stands the Garden of Eden, and within the Garden God brought about a new kind of being: the human person. With dignity beyond imagining, this new creation was made in the image and likeness of God himself, having intellect and will, joining the immortal and spiritual to the material. The first humans were named Adam and Eve, and they were called by God “very good,” o...

The creation account proceeds to a small bit of rock called Earth, which would outshine all the cosmos in the great drama of the Genesis story. Its conditions were arranged just so, allowing the planet to sustain life: plants and animals, fish and birds and reptiles, living things of marvelous variety. While the word "myth" has come to mean "untrue account," we mean something quite different. Thro...

At the beginning of creation, God first called into existence the highest of his creatures: the angels. The seraphim, the cherubim, the archangels, and the guardian angels were created to live in everlasting love with the Holy Trinity. But it was Lucifer, the noblest of God’s angels, who used the gift of his freedom to protect his pride rather than serve His Lord. Lucifer fell from the Divine pres...

Who is God? We begin our story of salvation history with a consideration of that mysterious, almighty, longed-for being who is the source and end of the human drama: God. What is He like? Why did He create? Who is He, and who are we? The Christian narrative begins with these questions, and they will set the stage for those great questions that will define the whole trajectory of the story of the h...

Much of what it means to be converted in mind to Christianity is to understand and embrace the central narrative of the Faith. Through a 33-part audio series, PrimeMatters.com presents the Christian mythic narrative from beginning to end. Encounter the story of God and His plan for the human race in salvation history, found within the pages of the Bible and beyond. While much of this story is...