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Quote by Pepper Basham

“Keep to your Bible and to your fairy tales, sweet girl. One is for your soul and the other is for your daydreams. Both will help you through this, and in both you’ll find your story (pp. 245-246).”

Quote by Pepper Basham

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Hope Between the Pages

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Pepper Basham

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“Do we recognize our helplessness, that even our very desires need to be changed by the Spirit’s transforming grace? Or do we approach Scripture pridefully, thinking we’ve “got this,” attempting to impress God, others, and even ourselves by our obedience? (p. 39).”

“For too many years, this was the way I approached Scripture, because I didn’t understand my neediness. I thought that by opening my Bible I was seeking something good and right to do, rather than primarily seeking someone to love (p. 39).”

“The main method of meditation as outlined by Rabbi Abraham, thus involves the contemplation of nature. A person can contemplate the greatness of the sea, marveling at the many creatures that live in it. One can gaze at a clear night sky, allowing his mind to be completely absorbed by the glory of the stars. Through such intense contemplation, one can attain a meditative state directed toward the Divine. This is seen as the level of Aseph, one of the co-authors of the Psalms, who purified his heart and mind, cleansing it of all things other than the Divine. It is regarding this state that he said, "My flesh and heart fade away," When he divorced his consciousness from everything but God, he said, "Who have I in heaven? And with You, I have no desire on earth" (Psalm 73)”

“It is also striking and worth noting that this apocalyptic message comes to be toned down, and then virtually eliminated, and finally preached against (allegedly by Jesus!) in our later sources. And it is not hard to figure out why. If Jesus predicted that the imminent apocalypse would arrive within his own generation, before his disciples had all died, what was one to think a generation later when in fact it had not arrived? One might conclude that Jesus was wrong. But if one wanted to stay true to him, one might change the message that he proclaimed so that he no longer spoke about the coming apocalypse. So it is no accident that our final canonical Gospel, John, written after that first generation, no longer has Jesus proclaim an apocalyptic message. He preaches something else entirely. Even later, in a book like the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus preaches directly against an apocalyptic point of view (sayings 2, 113). As time went on, the apocalyptic message came to be seen as misguided, or even dangerous. And so the traditions of Jesus’s preaching were changed. But in our earliest multiply attested sources, there it is for all to see.”

“The idea that Jesus was raised on the third day is not necessarily a historical recollection of when the resurrection happened, but a theological claim of its significance. I should point out that the Gospels do not indicate on which day Jesus was raised. [...] this “third day” is said to have been in accordance with the testimony of scripture, which for any early Christian author would not have been the New Testament (which had not yet been written) but the Hebrew Bible. There is a widespread view among scholars that the author of this statement is indicating that in his resurrection on the third day Jesus is thought to have fulfilled the saying of the Hebrew prophet Hosea: “After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him” (Hos. 6:2). Other scholars—a minority of them, although I find myself attracted to this view—think that the reference is to the book of Jonah, [...] Jesus himself is recorded in the Gospels as likening his upcoming death and resurrection to “the sign of Jonah” (Matt. 12:39–41). Whether the reference is to Hosea or Jonah, why would it be necessary to say that the resurrection happened on the third day? Because that is what was predicted in scripture. This is a theological claim that Jesus’s death and resurrection happened according to plan.”

“For many years scholars have considered it highly significant that Paul, our earliest “witness” to the resurrection, says nothing about the discovery of an empty tomb. Our earliest account of Jesus’s resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3–5) discusses the appearances without mentioning an empty tomb, while our earliest Gospel, Mark, narrates the discovery of the empty tomb without discussing any of the appearances (Mark 16:1–8). This has led some scholars, such as New Testament expert Daniel Smith, to suggest that these two sets of tradition—the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus after his death—probably originated independently of one another and were put together as a single tradition only later—for example, in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. If this is the case, then the stories of Jesus’s resurrection were indeed being expanded, embellished, modified, and possibly even invented in the long process of their being told and retold over the years.”

“Luke has interspersed with an account of the nativity of John the Baptist (no doubt obtained from the rival sect of John) a parallel nativity of Jesus built on John's model. Not that Luke himself was the one who composed it; it, too, was most likely pre-Lukan material. [...] Though Luke used prior sources, probably in Aramaic, for the nativities of John and Jesus, it appears he himself contributed bits of connective text to bring the two parallel stories into a particular relationship so that John should be subordinated to Jesus, whom Luke makes Jesus' elder cousin. This original, redactional material is Luke 1:36, 39-45, 56. It consists of a visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, whereupon the fetus John, already in possession of clairvoyant gifts, leaps in the womb to acknowledge the greater glory of the messianic zygote. All this is blatantly legendary, or there is no such thing as a legend. Luke probably got the idea from Gen. 25:22, where according to the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, Rebecca is painfully pregnant with twins. [...] In this way Luke tries to harmonize the competing traditions of Jesus and John, whose cousinhood is no doubt his own invention.”