Marginal Christianity

Emboldened by Jesus’ announcement of the coming of the kingdom of heaven (4:17), his direction for living through this period of crisis and judgment (chs.5-7), and a litany of ten demonstrations of power by Jesus proving his authority to act as the Messiah and agent of God’s coming kingdom (chs.8-9). Now we come to his transferal of his own authority to his disciples and sending them out to spread the news of the coming kingdom throughout Israel (ch.10). It is crucial to read this passage in light of this 1 st century context. Jesus explicitly delimits this mission to Israel: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near’” (10:5-7). This inter-Jewish mission is a key component of Jesus’ effort to regather and reconstitute Abrahamic Israel under the shadow of God’s coming judgment of his people. Unlike the so-called Great Com...

Ch.2 Jumping into Revelation “Few writings in all of literature have been so obsessively read with such generally disastrous results as the Book of Revelation (= the Apocalypse). Its history of interpretation is largely a story of tragic misinterpretation, resulting from a fundamental misapprehension of the work’s literary form and purpose. Insofar as its arcane symbols have fed the treasury of prayer and poetry, its influence has been benign. More often, these same symbols have nurtured delusionary systems, both private and public, to the destruction of their fashioners and to the discredit of the writing.”                                                                ...