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Does Christmas have pagan origins?

...entary on Daniel: For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, eight days before the kalends of January [December 25th], the 4th day of the week [Wednesday], while Augustus was in his forty-second year, [2 or 3 BC] but from Adam five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty third year, 8 days before the kalends of April [March 25th], the Day of Preparation, the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar [29 or 30 AD], while Rufus and Roubellion and Gaius Caesar, for the 4th time, and Gaius Cestius Saturninus were Consuls. — Hippolytus, ~220 AD The text from where this quote is found has an interesting history, as...

Is fasting an expectation for Christians?

...3; 69:10; Daniel 9:3; Joel 2:12; Zechariah 8:18–19). As you can see, fasting has a long and active tradition within Judaism, which passed on into Christianity quite naturally. During Second Temple Judaism, biweekly fasts were a common practice amongst Jews (see Luke 18:12 for a brief mention of it), and this is what Jesus would have been targeting in his teaching in Matt. 6. A late first century text from the early church, called The Didache (which was a sort of “church handbook”), expands on this teaching of Jesus and demonstrates to us how the earliest believers understood this and carried on the practice of fasting, taking the familiar model they were...

From Dust to Redemption: The Meaning of Ash Wednesday

...Job 42:6, Daniel 9:3, Jonah 3:6). By the 8th century, the imposition of ashes on the forehead became a common practice in the Western Church. Pope Urban II (r. 1088–1099) helped formalise Ash Wednesday as the official beginning of Lent, reinforcing the idea of a season of penitence leading up to Easter. The name “Ash Wednesday” itself comes from the tradition of marking the faithful with ashes, typically in the shape of a cross, while the priest or minister recites words such as, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19) or “Repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). The Lenten Fast Fasting has always been a...

Coffee with Jesus: John 1

...y back to Daniel 7 and the Son of Man imagery, and the ancient Jewish theology of the “two powers in heaven”: V.18 (CSB)No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side — he has revealed him. It’s interesting that John the Baptist didn’t know about who Jesus truly was, despite being cousins, until he baptised him, as it appears that the Father had spoken to John at some prior point telling him what to look out for: John 1:32–33And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptise with wate...