hermas

Was St Paul a Former Slave
Biblical Interpretation

Was St Paul a Former Slave? Were His Parents Enslaved by the Romans?

06/05/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Our authors in Christianity Today note that several prominent Biblical scholars in past 150 years have speculated that Paul’s parents were enslaved, perhaps in “the uprising in 4 BC, when Varus, Roman governor of Syria, burned entire cities and crucified 2,000 people. In Galilean cities like Sepphoris, Josephus wrote in Antiquities of the Jews, ‘troops made its inhabitants slaves.’” Furthermore, in St Jerome’s commentary on Philemon, written around the end of the fourth century, likely using Origen’s commentary as a source, states St Paul’s parents were Gischala in Judea, and were among the Jews exiled to Tarsus by the Romans. A few centuries later, St Photius, the scholarly bishop of Constantinople, confirms this, adding that St Paul was born to enslaved parents in Tarsus. These ancient sources are highly regarded by modern scholars. […]

Five Miniute Theology

Should the Books of the Apocrypha Be Included In the Bible?

02/09/2022 Bruce Strom 0

The Church Fathers differed on what should be included in the Old Testament canon, St Jerome, who had updated the Latin translation of Scriptures in the Vulgate, preferred a narrow canon including only the Hebrew books of the Jewish canon. St Augustine preferred the wider canon which included the deutero-canonical books written in Greek, which are called the Apocrypha by Protestants. St Jerome and St Augustine were contemporaries, they often corresponded with each other. […]

Early Church Writing

Shepherd of Hermas on Envy, Dangers of Luxury, and Salvation

04/27/2018 Bruce Strom 2

The Shepherd of Hermas, also known as the Pastor of Hermas, was regarded by some early Christians as Scripture. A consensus was reached that only books that were apostolic would be included in the canon, and the Shepherd was written in the generations after the apostles. But it was recommended by many for profitable spiritual reading, and reading this work is profitable still, for the message of Hermas runs counter to the prosperity gospel, condemning luxurious living. He has a vision in Similitude 6 of a false shepherd, “an angel of luxury and deceit,” whose sheep “were feeding luxuriously and riotously, merrily skipping about,” “deceived by wicked desires, forgetting the commandments of the Living God.” Those who are lost in luxurious living, spending their time eating “the richest delicacies and in drunken revels,” cannot “return to life through repentance, because they are adding to their sins, and blaspheming the name of the Lord.” […]