1. What does it mean to say that parables are “teaching tools” about the kingdom?
2. “When” and “where” is the Kingdom of God?hy67
3. How was the Kingdom of God “subversive” both to Judaism and Rome?
4. What is the “centerpiece” of the Lord‘s Prayer?
5. What does it mean “Give us this day our daily bread”?
6. In addition to “debt,” what are other metaphors for “sin” in the Bible?
7. What is the only obligation placed upon us in the Sermon on the Mount?
8. What Old Testament examples do we have of God bringing people into a time of “trial”?
9. What is another way of understanding “evil one” at the end of the Sermon on the Mount?
10. How does the Sermon on the Mount present Jesus as a “new and Improved Moses”?
11. How are Jesus’s five speeches in Matthew’s Gospel a parallel to the Old Testament?
12. What is the meaning of the two short parables in Matthew 9:16-17?
13. What does it mean to say the Kingdom of God is “paradoxical”?
14. What does it mean to “let your light shine”?
15. In what way does Jesus teach about “inner transformation” in the Sermon on the Mount?
16. What is a “simple definition” of “hypocrisy”?
17. How does your professor sum up the Sermon on the Mount?

Lecture 6—John, A Different Gospel
1. About how many years after Jesus’s crucifixion was John’s Gospel written?
2. Who might “the beloved disciple” refer to?
3. What is emphasized in John’s Gospel more than in the other three?
4. What are the two parts of John’s Gospel?
5. How does Jesus establish his authority in John’s Gospel?
6. Why does john place the Temple cleansing episode early in his Gospel (chapter 2)?
7. What is John 3:3 about?
8. What does “so” mean in John 3:16?
9. What is the point of the washing of the disciples’ feet?
10. Why might John have left out Jesus’s baptism from his Gospel?
11. What does John’s “anti-Semitic” flavor tell us about when his Gospel was written?
12. What begins to happen in the second century that is already hinted at in John’s Gospel?
13. What does “binary opposition” mean?
14. In John’s “prologue” (John 1:1-18), what does the phrase “In the beginning” allude to in the Old Testament?
15. How does the Prologue establish Jesus’s authority?
16. In the Prologue, where we read that Jesus “lived among us,” what is a better way of translating the Greek word rather than “lived” and what can we learn from that?
17. What do the “I AM” saying of Jesus probably refer back to in the Old Testament?
18. Briefly, what does it mean that John’s Gospel is about the “long haul”?
19. What the “doubting Thomas” episode tell us about John’s “long haul” perspective?
20. What is the “intimacy” that Jesus prayers for his disciples in John 17:20-16?