Biblical Heritage Center Blog

  In my last email I introduced the Law of Language and Linguistic Profiles ( click here to read ). Today I am going to introduce you to the Linguistic Profile of “ the Jesus of history ” -- the person who lived in Nazareth and traveled through Galilee and Judea preaching his gospel . We call him “ the Jesus of history ” because as we explore biblical heritages and travel from the 1 st century to the 21 st century , we will make new Linguistic Profiles from documents written between those dates. Those Linguistic Profiles will be about Jesus the Christ, Jesus The Christ of Paul, Jesus the Christ of Athanasius, Jesus the Christ of Arius, Jesus the Christ of Constantine the Great, Jesus the Christ of Augustine, Jesus the Christ of the Trinity, Jesus the Christ of Martin Luther, etc .   The information we acquire from creating or just reading Linguistic Profiles is very useful, but when we compare Linguistic Profiles of Jesus from documents written over a 1,500 year span ,...

You have probably heard this before, but the journey that led to the creation of the Biblical Heritage Center began when I prayed the prayer below in August 1980. I was preparing to begin classes at a Bible College and become an ordained minister.   Dear God, please show me what you want me study in my Bible.   Immediately, these words popped into my mind:   Unless you know how words work you can’t understand the words of the Bible.   If that was the answer, it made absolutely no sense to me -- so I forgot about it! After that I graduated from the Bible College, became an ordained minister and founded a church.   Four years later an advertisement for a new book came in the mail -- “ Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus .” I ordered it and as soon as I finished reading it I remembered the answer to that prayer. That was the moment I decided to find out “ how words work .” I spent an entire month in a university library doing research which led to the crea...

  In my last email I told you the story about the prayer I prayed forty years ago – and the answer that made absolutely no sense to me . My first impression, after thinking about it later, was “obviously I know how words work I used them every day.” But that answer doesn’t hold water because I use a car, computer, smartphone, refrigerator, etc. every day and have no idea of how they actually work!   Nineteen years after praying that prayer, I co-founded the Biblical Heritage Center (BHC) with Dr. Ike Tennison (University of Texas at Arlington professor that taught courses I took in Classical Greek ). This year BHC celebrates its 21 st birthday. Below are the facts that have guided BHC since 1999 .   1. BHC is an educational institution that teaches people How Words Work and How to Work with Words by applying that knowledge to the words of the Bible by Exploring Biblical Heritages.   2. BHC teaches people how to use the BHC Guideline below to Transfor...

  My emails The Only Salvation Message Jesus Taught and The Salvation Message was a Parable not a Commandment! challenged members of his audience’s beliefs about salvation . That was his goal! It is important to always anchor words you read or hear to reality by linking them to the time and place they were communicated . Jesus taught salvation parable in Matthew 25 around 27 CE at the Mount of Olives .   At that time Christianity did not exist and Jesus was not speaking to Gentiles . The people he challenged were all Jewish .   One other point modern readers must clearly understand is that no one in the Jewish audiences hearing him viewed Jesus as being “ the God ” or “ a god. ” Members of his audience were trying to figure out if he was “ The Anointed One, ” an apocalyptic messianic figure. They believed that the arrival of the Anointed One signaled that the Great Day of Judgment was very near.   His words were not viewed as new divine comman...

In Galatians Paul calls his gospel “ The Gospel of Christ ,” thus those who believe “ The Gospel of Christ ” were called “ Christ -ians .” Paul made it very clear that his gospel was not like any other gospel . In Galatians 1:11-12 we read: The gospel which was preached by me is not according to a man , because I neither received it from a man , nor was I taught it (by a man) , but (I received it) through a vision (revelation) of Jesus (the) Christ . Paul, unlike the Saul in Acts, does not describe that experience – so do not project Saul’s words into this story . Paul opened Galatians (1:1) with a claim that sets him apart from the other apostles -- his “apostleship” is completely different . Paul, not an apostle through men nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Jesus Christ from the dead . The other apostles received their apostleships prior to the resurrection. None of them were given “ The Gospel of Christ .” Accordi...

There has always been some confusion over whether Saul and Paul is the same person. The confusion begins in the Book of Acts. ● “Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul . . . he brought him to Antioch . . . for a whole year they taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called ‘ Christians ’ in Antioch .” ( Acts 11:25-26 ) ● “ Then Agrippa said to Paul , `You almost persuade me to become a Christian .’” ( Acts 26:28) ● “ Then Saul , who also  is called   Paul . . . ” ( Acts 13:9a ) Based on the three verses above, we would assume they are references to the same person – but is he the Paul we read about in the Epistles? The name “ Saul ” doesn’t appear in the Epistles. In order to answer that question we must examine the stories of the “ conversion experiences ” of Saul in Acts and Paul in Galatians . Pay close attention to the time periods and places mentioned in both accounts. Saul’s experience is found in Acts 9 and...