Bible Culture

Bible factoid: Reading the Gospel of Luke earlier and came across Jesus calling the Pharisees “unmarked graves” in 11:44, “”Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.” (NIV2011).

Which reminded me of when the Lord called them “whitewashed” or marked tombs in Matthew 23:37, “”Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.” (NIV2011)

It strikes me that the cut of the insult is even deeper in Luke than… Continue reading

Interesting Bible Factoid. My evening readings are from the OT and I am currently in Ezekiel. This weekend I was in chapter 26, the prophecy about Tyre, and came across Nebuchadnezzar’s name as “Nebuchadrezzar”.

The KJV and a few other translations have Nebuchadrezzar which is more in line with the Hebrew but most translations just put Nebuchadnezzar so it matches the usual form of the name throughout the Bible.

That is unfortunate since the Hebrew intends a play on words here.

Apparently Nebuchadrezzar is the proper form of the name and means, “May Nabu protect the eldest son/ heir” (Nabu was the important Assyro-Babylonian god… Continue reading