The Bible Workshop

I would like to point out two resources that no Bible student should miss. The first resource is a Bible study browser toolbar. It is described at this site. The toolbar is useful because it comes with a lot of links for biblical resources on the web. I myself am maintaining it so please take advantage of this facility. The other resource I would like to point out is Scott Hahn's and Geff Cavins's EWTN program, "Our Father's Plan". Since the year 2000 there have been other sites who have appeared on the internet bearing the same title. Do not be misled. Continue reading "Two Resources To Take Note Of"

Please bookmark this site with the following URL: http://bibelwerks.d0x.dehttp://bibelwerks.cjb.net Continue reading "This Blog's URL"

It is about time that the Bible Workshop is resurrected. Thanks to services that are still made available on the web. I was informed of this present service by one of the frequenters of the Kapihan, and I found out that there are two of them hosted here.

Continue reading "The Bible Workshop"

For the 23rd Week in OT, Year B, Paul and Luke, companions in the ministry, tell us about growing with and in the community of faith and taking the words of the Lord seriously. The readings that I post here do not reflect the readings for the feasts of the Triumph of the Cross and that of Our Lady of Sorrows which will be posted elsewhere. Instead, I have kept to what is found in the weekday lectionary hoping to work on each of the readings at length in another time and place.

Continue reading "Growing In Community and Hearing The Word"

I am preparing a daily reading guide for this week until the onset of Advent. I have written something for the period September 4-9, 2006. The readings are based on the Lectionary for the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, Year B. I haven't checked the readings for September 8, the Nativity of Mary. What you will find as readings for that day are what you'd find for Friday, 22nd Week, OT (B). Continue reading "This Week's Liturgical Readings"

How does one make sense of Ephesians 1:3-14? I propose that you look at the illustration below and see how the principal verbs in the section and the relative pronoun "in whom" structure Paul's berakah. Click on the picture for a clearer look.

How this works out as explained can be found here.

It is not very often that I look at a Bible Dictionary to see how this or that scholar has compiled the nuances of a Hebrew or Greek word to shed light on a particular bible passage. But tonight as I was preparing a post on Psalm 24, McKenzie's Bible Dictionary was very handy in giving me the materials I wanted. In the article on Psalm 24, I write about the three dimensions of God's love as expressed in the Hebrew words "chanan" "racham" and "chesed", God's unconditional love, motherly love and covenantal love respectively. There is a word for love in Hebrew, and it is "ahab", the word rendered in the New Testament as "agape". But since the psalm did not give me an opportunity to write about it, I left it unmentioned. John Paul II in footnotes 60 and 61 of Dives in Misericordia speaks about "chesed" and "rachamim" (viscera misericordiae) as God's covenantal love and motherly love respectively, what I usually refer to as the masculine and the feminine love of God. In footnote 51, he gives us a more comprehensive treatment of "chesed" "rachamim" and "chanan" in the context of Divine Mercy Continue reading "An Insight Into Divine Love"

For the Gospel reading of Lent I (B), we are given the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:7-15. I have written an article on Matthew 6:7 entitled "Repeated Prayers or Vain Repetition?". The question whether the text is anti-rosary is a matter of ideology: non-Catholics would say it is about prayers that are repeated. However, if one looks closely even at the way the passage is rendered in more recent English translations, one would find the word "babbling" or "vain repetition" and not "repetition" or "repetitive" alone.