The roots of the Easter story: Where did Christian beliefs about Jesus’ resurrection come from?

  As Easter approaches, Christians around the world begin to focus on two of the central tenets of their faith: the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

  Other charismatic Jewish teachers or miracle workers were active in Judea around the same time, approximately 2,000 years ago. What set Jesus apart was his followers’ belief in his resurrection. For believers, this was not only a miracle, but a sign that Jesus was the long-awaited Jewish messiah, sent to save the people of Israel from their oppressors.

  But was the idea of a resurrection itself a unique belief in first-century Israel?

Was Jesus really born in Bethlehem? Why the Gospels disagree over the circumstances of Christ’s birth

  Every Christmas, a relatively small town in the Palestinian West Bank comes center stage: Bethlehem. Jesus, according to some biblical sources, was born in this town some two millennia ago.

  Yet the New Testament Gospels do not agree about the details of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Some do not mention Bethlehem or Jesus’ birth at all.

  The Gospels’ different views might be hard to reconcile. But as a scholar of the New Testament, what I argue is that the Gospels offer an important insight into the Greco-Roman views of ethnic identity, including genealogies.

Why Easter is called Easter, and other little-known facts about the holiday

  Today Christians are celebrating Easter, the day on which the resurrection of Jesus is said to have taken place. The date of celebration changes from year to year.

  The reason for this variation is that Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox.

Sam Fulwood III: Stepping away from racism

  During a 1960 televised interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. decried, “One of the shameful tragedies [is] that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hours, in Christian America.”

  Much in American life has changed in the more than half century since King argued that no Christian church could follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and remain segregated. Legal segregation of public facilities and transportation systems are no longer enshrined in law. Yet the intimacy and privacy of worship remains, for the most part, racially separate.

Michael Josephson: The Golden Rule as the Road of Honor

  Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, Confucius was asked, “Is there one word that may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?”

  He answered, “Reciprocity. What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” This basic principle, now called the Golden Rule, can be found in every major religion and philosophy.