Accordingly, if Greek Matthew came first, Mark used it as its primary source. And this would stand in tension with our earliest source, Papias, who claimed that Mark wrote what he remembered Peter had said.

Jesus is doing the same when he instructs those who struggle with lust to rip out their eyes.3 Your eternal destiny is a very serious matter. So you should take your sanctification seriously! This is an instance where we can say the text “does not mean what it says. It means what it means.”4

Isaiah 52:13–53:12 is considered to be the strongest single prophecy, gaining further strength from the related passages in chapters 42, 49, and 50. I am indebted to Michael L. Brown for this insight. For more information, see his debate with Rabbi Daniel Freitag: “Is Jesus the Jewish Messiah?” at Kennesaw State University, March 23, 2017,

Contradictions offer a challenge to the historical reliability of the Gospels and to some versions of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. However, they do not necessarily call into question the truth of the Christian faith.

In the previous chapter, we looked briefly at 2 Corinthians 13:2–3 where Paul mentions Christ speaking through him: “If I come again, I will not spare [anyone], since you seek proof that Christ is speaking through me. He is not weak toward you but is powerful among you.” This text appears to be referring to a type of divine inspiration no less than

Most often, the Word of God should be thought of in the broader sense of being God’s message or God’s teachings. In fact, it is used in this sense with great frequency in the New Testament where both Jesus’s teachings and the message preached in oral form by his apostles and others is called the Word of God (Luke 5:1; 8:4–15; Acts 4:31; 6:2, 7;

This brings me to a principle by which I am guided: our view of Scripture should be consistent with what we observe in Scripture. This principle is not profound, but it is essential and based on common sense.

If I truly have a high view of Scripture, I will embrace it as God has given it to us rather than insist that it conform to a model shaped by how I think he should have given it. If I refuse to do this, I may sincerely believe that I hold a high view of Scripture when I actually hold a high view of my view of Scripture.

Plutarch offers us the rare opportunity of being able to compare how the same author reports the same story on multiple occasions. When we make these comparisons, we understand why, for a long time, classicists and many New Testament scholars have claimed that ancient historians employed a number of compositional devices that resulted in