By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The Book of Job is one of the famous and yet one of the least understood books of the Old Testament. ‘The patience of Job’ and ‘Job’s comforters’ have become proverbial idioms which emerged from the book’s popularity and ubiquity; and yet how patient was Job, and who were his comforters?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The fourth and last of the gospels which begin the New Testament, the Gospel of John is also the most unusual of the four. Whilst the other three gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain many overlapping details (and are known collectively, on account of these similarities, as the ‘synoptic gospels’), John’s account of Jesus’ life and divinity is couched in very different terms.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’, as the (slightly ungrammatically reworded) sentiment has it, or ‘Let him without sin cast the first stone’. This quotation can be traced back to Jesus, and to a specific incident described in the Gospel of St John, but what is the context of them, and what did Jesus mean?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
John 3:16 is one of the most famous and oft-quoted verses in the whole of the New Testament. Indeed, biblical scholars often view John 3:16 as the epitome of the whole gospel: this is the word the nineteenth-century scholar Alvah Hovey used to sum up the central importance of this single verse.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Philippians 4:13 is one of the most famous quotations from St. Paul’s writings gathered together in the New Testament. In the Authorised King James Version of the Bible, published in 1611, Philippians 4:13 is translated as ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me’.