Bible Bard - English

Jesus is the center of the New Testament. He is the subject of the New Testament story. We expect certain things of the narrative, yet, in the midst of the story, Jesus says the unexpected. This episode lists six events in the text that we find shocking.

When we talk about the surprising knowledge of Jesus we also must mention the surprising power of Jesus. There are things the Bible mentions that Jesus should not have known and there are things that Jesus should not have been able to do. For the Bible Bard, the question (without theological, doctrinal precepts) is what does the New Testament teach?

What is not often said in churches is that God has regrets about what has happened to humanity over its history. How can it be that the God who has all power, the God who has all knowledge feels regret? Some systematic theologians believe that God cannot be opposed because his power and his knowledge are absolute. Yet the Bible provides direct textual evidence that in our time this assertion is no...

Social justice has been a human desire ever since the first city state developed during the Bronze Age, about 5,500 years ago. In the U.S.A. social justice warriors sought to end slavery (1,700- 1,800 ad, get women the right to vote (1920), end child labor (1938), end segregation and racial discrimination (1950s-1960s), and then broadened in our times to include seeking rights and protections for...

There is a term in the New Testament that Jesus created called born again . Alive today, 2.38 billion people claim to be Christians. This number is about 31% of the global population. Within that group of Christians, and within the evangelical and historically black Protestant traditions in the U.S.A., only 28% to 35% of US adults (about 50 million adults) consider themselves "born-again." Statist...

The Bible speaks of two contrary terms: "the mind governed by the flesh" and "the mind governed by the Spirit". The text we analyze appears to suggest that the believing human being has access to either mind because they can “set” their mind (agree with) either what “the flesh desires” or what “the Spirit desires”. This episode discusses what the text is teaching us about that willful choice.

There are three conditions that plague humanity: they are fear, worry, and anxiety. Surveys indicate that in the world about 70% of humanity spends a lot of emotional and mental energy on these three internalizing, affective states. What the Bible Bard is interested in is how the Bible addresses this human problem.

Luke 18:18-27 tells a story of a conversation Jesus has with a man who is called the rich young ruler . This man asks Jesus a question, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life ?” The answer Jesus gives to the basic question at the heart of all religions is shocking and totally different from the answers provided by other religions.

The text of 2 Corinthians 5 provides an unusual instruction on how to live our lives. This is a very strange thing to talk to people about. The subject is what are you living for? What are you living to accomplish? In trying to answer that question, we look at how a few great pagan thinkers have answered it including Aristotle, Siddhartha Gautama, Epicurus, Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and...

In John 5:16-47 we are given a long passage that discusses who Jesus is. These 31 verses declare a lot about Jesus that is ignored by another lot of people. This person Jesus, this historic figure Jesus, is not a shadowy figure of legend. He is not a mythic person, the concoction of novelists. What the Bible actually states about Jesus is shocking.

When we read the Bible as literature we often notice such wonderful things. In John Chapter 12 we find something revealed that we didn’t expect — there are three different classes of believers in Jesus. This episode discusses what they are.

The letters of the Apostle Paul to early Christian believers are wonderful because they show us what Christianity was like when it just began. These texts become for us a history of what was said about Jesus and what was believed by those who listened to the early message from those who had been with Jesus himself. Our methodology of literary analysis takes a particular text and gains clarity beca...

This episode of the Bible Bard podcast is Lesson Ninety-nine (99) God Has No Favorites. The Apostle Peter says something quite astonding: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.” This episode discusses what this means to Christianity historically.

Today the Bible Bard celebrates the posting of our 100th English podcast episode. This is 4,343 minutes of podcast content examines from a literary point-of-view what the Bible says about who is God and who are human beings. The podcast is published in eight (8) languages including English , Bengali , Chichewa , Hindi , Spanish , Swahili , and Urdu , with three (3) more languages in development: C...