"Christ our Pelican." Mosaic from the Byzantine Museum, Thessaloniki, Greece. Photo taken by John Martens, January 2006. In the first entry in the 1 Thessalonians Bible Junkies Commentary I began by ...

The ongoing debate about the structure of the earliest Christian communities—an issue of Christian origins—continues to divide Pauline interpreters. While some (e.g. E. Schüssler Fiorenza) are of the ...

A two-week trip to Greece will let priests in Rome follow in the steps of St. Paul: all the way from his conversion in Philippi, to his preaching in Corinth and finally his overnight stop in Crete as ...

The election is over. The results were announced. Our country is in the process of change. The whole situation reminds me of Paul’s message to the people of Thessalonia, who were looking for guidance ...

The Apostle Paul is, next to Jesus, clearly the most intriguing figure of the 1st century of Christianity, and far better known than Jesus because he wrote all of those letters that we have [as] ...

In January 2012, I began blogging a commentary on the Gospel of Mark, available at the Bible Junkies blog and now at America Magazine, which I completed in March 2013. From March to May 2013, I ...