Pastor's Blog

Have you ever wondered who the most prolific authors of the New Testament are? Well, wonder no more because here's the skinny: the top three by far are Luke, Paul, and John. Some people will perhaps be surprised to learn that Paul doesn’t stand at the head of the list. The claim is often made that he wrote most of the New Testament. Not so. To be sure, he wrote the most books , but Luke wrote the most words, although their totals are very close to each other. Together, the two men wrote just over half of the New Testament.  Of the 138,020 Greek words in the New Testament, Luke wrote 27.5 percent (37,932). Paul wrote 23.5 percent (32,408). If we take Hebrews to have been written by Paul—the traditional view, though opposed by the consensus of modern biblical scholarship—then the numbers are almost identical. The total number of words written by Paul rises to 37,361 (or 27.1 percent of the total).   For a break down of the numbers, see the two charts below. Click to e...

We can never hope to fully understand Paul unless we constantly bear two things in mind about him:  (1) his identity as a Jew , and (2) his calling to be an apostle to the Gentiles . To lose sight of either of these (or both!) is to miss the most important context for understanding him. Paul lived at a very critical time in the history of redemption—when the saving benefits of the covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants were first extended en masse to all nations. It was a period of remarkable transition, quite unlike anything Israel had ever experienced. And Paul was called to participate in that transition. It brought about a fundamental change in the composition of the covenant people. Throughout history, God had dealt in a unique way with Israel. They were his “treasured possession among all peoples…a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:5-6). The Lord regarded them as “the apple of his eye” (Deut. 32:10; Zech. 2:8) and gave them many special favors. A...