Latest BHC Newsletter: The Forgotten Father: The Man that Raised Jesus

The July issue of the Biblical Heritage Center newsletter -- Creating Safer Better Lives By Discovering Ourselves & Our Biblical Heritages – is now online. It contains the following articles and July Memorials.

Once upon a time a minister, professor and rabbi took a journey. . .

The title sounds like the beginning of a good joke, but it isn’t. It is proof that people with different biblical heritages can work together to tackle religious issues that most people try to avoid. I am the minister, Ike Tennison is the professor and Jeffrey Leynor is the rabbi. I have been on this journey for over thirty-five years now. Ike joined it about thirty years ago when I enrolled in a course in Classical Greek he was teaching at the University of Texas at Arlington. Jeffrey became part of our journey a little over twenty-five years ago when I enrolled in a course he was teaching about the Prophets at the Jewish Community Center in Dallas.

The Forgotten Father: The Man that Raised Jesus

For most of his life, he was most likely known as “Jesus son of Joseph.” However, as a result of Gentile theologies that developed in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, in our opinion, the role of Joseph in the life of Jesus has faded into the distant past. It always helps to put subjects into a chronological context, especially when they are discussions about someone’s life. Scholars are divided about how long Jesus personally led the Jesus Movement; some say three years while others say one year. In either case, they pretty much agree that he began it when he about thirty years old. So, it was at least thirty years before anyone called him “The Son of God” or “The Anointed One” (Christ) -- until then people would have known him as Jesus son of Joseph.

The Importance of Creating Sacred Spaces in Life

“Holy places” and “sacred spaces” are important in the Bible. It could be “physical place” or “space of time.” In the Hebrew Bible “holy” does not mean “religious,” it means “set apart for a specific purpose.” The Hebrew word translated “holy” is QADASH and its first appearance in the Bible is Genesis 2:3.

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