Because the coastal lands of the Black Sea are mentioned infrequently and mostly indirectly in the Bible, they are often overlooked as significant contributors to the context of biblical events and passages, but careful study of Scripture reveals that the biblical writers were very aware of these people groups throughout the entire span of ancient […]
Category Archives: New Testament
The City of Corinth and Its Surroundings
The prosperous city of Corinth was strategically located at one end of a narrow isthmus joining southern Greece with the Greek mainland. Its position gave it command over both maritime travel and land travel in the region, for virtually all land traffic moving between southern Greece and the mainland had to pass through the city, […]
Jesus’ Final Journey to Jerusalem
Much like the difficulties of discerning the Israelites’ journey to the Promised Land (see here), the task of reconciling the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem into one coherent itinerary has proven very challenging for Bible scholars. As with many other events during Jesus’ ministry, the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke […]
Elam and the City of Susa
Though the nation of Elam receives limited attention in Scripture, the history of this ancient civilization spans nearly the entire breadth of the Bible from Genesis to Acts. After being listed among the descendants of Shem (Genesis 10:22), Elam is noted as one of the four Mesopotamian nations whose kings traveled to Canaan during Abraham’s […]
The First Jewish War against Rome
Much like the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 B.C., the ill-fated Jewish war against the Romans from A.D. 66-73 became a defining event in the history of Israel, and it affected the nascent Christian church as well. Tensions between Jews and Romans had run deep ever since Pompey first seized the land […]