Home » The Bible and Beyond
Enjoy posts about a variety of subjects, all designed to help you look at religion, the Bible, and early Christian texts in a new way.
By Dr. Hal Taussig|2021-09-11T05:48:45-04:00July 28th, 2021|Tags: Book of Wisdom, Christian Canon, Early Christian Texts, Hebrew Bible, Wisdom of Solomon|
"My proposal is to own the larger reality of Bibles and scripture in which the poetry, stories, letters, and wisdom take their largest and most flexible expressions."
By Shirley Paulson, PhD|2021-07-14T00:27:04-04:00July 14th, 2021|Tags: Eternal Life, Heaven, Salvation, Secret Revelation of John, Theology|
Surprisingly, even this description of torture and eternal punishment offers no hint of punishment due to a flawed, sinful nature. . . . People suffer from their own choices, not from an almighty judge.
By Dr. Hal Taussig|2021-07-03T12:35:53-04:00July 3rd, 2021|Tags: Bible, Jesus, New Testament|
"The names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are almost the only things that are the same in the respective infancy narratives."
By Shirley Paulson, PhD|2021-06-06T16:55:22-04:00June 9th, 2021|Tags: Ancient Writings, Faith, Fundamentalism, Nag Hammadi, Religion|
What is especially liberating about this for me is that I know these [Nag Hammadi] texts don’t belong to any other competing faith tradition either. All Christians ‘own’ them on an equal footing.
By Dr. Hal Taussig|2021-05-26T05:01:39-04:00May 26th, 2021|Tags: Bible, Gospels, New Testament, Old Testament|
"The Bible does not offer us rules that determine reality, rather it offers some combination of a wild stream and an improvising jazz band which make life bigger."
By Shirley Paulson, PhD|2021-05-12T00:18:23-04:00May 12th, 2021|Tags: Fear and Protection, Salvation, Secret Revelation of John, Violence|
‘Safety’—as it was understood among the early Jesus followers—was neither escape from sin and punishment, nor technological advances… It was a better understanding of our relationship to the divine power.
By Dr. Hal Taussig|2021-04-28T01:49:23-04:00April 28th, 2021|Tags: Christian Canon, Church, Natalie Renee Perkins, Odes of Solomon, Spirituality|
"Practice is somewhat flexible [and] allows those who practice to make adjustments and grow."
By Shirley Paulson, PhD|2021-04-13T21:32:01-04:00April 14th, 2021|Tags: Eternal Life, Letter of Peter to Philip|
"This ancient text sheds light on the link between the stark limitations of mortality and the possibilities of eternal life."
By Dr. Hal Taussig|2021-03-24T06:43:07-04:00March 24th, 2021|Tags: Christian Canon, Church, Noncanonical Texts, Religion|
"I hope that this blogpost signals to you the open-ended ways life comes toward us in the same way an open-ended Canon could help us be more alive. "
By Dr. Hal Taussig|2021-03-08T00:53:12-05:00March 8th, 2021|Tags: Gender Issues, Jesus, Sophia|
"One of the most intense controversies emerged when some of us pointed out that in the biblical books of Matthew and Luke, Jesus himself talked about Sophia in intimate and positive ways."
