Whether religious or atheist, most people today have a picture and a sense of the character of God. What's the origin of this image and how different is it from the way people envisioned God in Biblical times?

The Gospel of Matthew tells us that "magi" from the East brought gifts to the infant Jesus following a mysterious star. Western Christianity commemorates this event with the feast of Epiphany, on January 6. What do we know about these wise men? Where did they come? Were they kings or Zoroastrian priests? Is there any evidence of a new star? We'll look at all these and other questions to reveal the meaning of this story from a mythological and theological view point.

Join us every Sunday at 1:00 PM EDT for "Illumination" — Toronto congregation's Beyond the Walls class on the topics of scripture, church history, and theology. The theme this Sunday is "Tricking the Patriarchs: Biblical Matriarchs" part 3. This class will explore the ancient texts of the Hebrew Bible and early Christian communities in light of their historical context. Our goal is to understand the text's meaning by learning about the authors, their audiences, their purposes and goals. We will then discern what value (if any) these ancient ideas have for our own day. By avoiding modern, literalist, and presentist readings of scripture, we hope to allow the text to breath and offer us new insights and value in our own spiritual practices. All are welcome. LGBTQ+ affirming. Jewish and Christ tradition, but open to interfaith and skeptical perspectives.

Join us every Sunday at 1:00 PM EDT for "Illumination" — Toronto congregation's Beyond the Walls class on the topics of scripture, church history, and theology. The theme this Sunday is "The Ten Commandments." This class will explore the ancient texts of the Hebrew Bible and early Christian communities in light of their historical context. Our goal is to understand the text's meaning by learning about the authors, their audiences, their purposes and goals. We will then discern what value (if any) these ancient ideas have for our own day. By avoiding modern, literalist, and presentist readings of scripture, we hope to allow the text to breath and offer us new insights and value in our own spiritual practices. All are welcome. LGBTQ+ affirming. Jewish and Christ tradition, but open to interfaith and skeptical perspectives.

Join us every Sunday at 1:00 PM EDT for "Illumination" — Toronto congregation's Beyond the Walls class on the topics of scripture, church history, and theology. The theme this Sunday is "Tricking the Patriarchs: Biblical Matriarchs" part 2. This class will explore the ancient texts of the Hebrew Bible and early Christian communities in light of their historical context. Our goal is to understand the text's meaning by learning about the authors, their audiences, their purposes and goals. We will then discern what value (if any) these ancient ideas have for our own day. By avoiding modern, literalist, and presentist readings of scripture, we hope to allow the text to breath and offer us new insights and value in our own spiritual practices. All are welcome. LGBTQ+ affirming. Jewish and Christ tradition, but open to interfaith and skeptical perspectives.

Join us every Sunday at 1:00 PM EDT for "Illumination" — Toronto congregation's Beyond the Walls class on the topics of scripture, church history, and theology. The theme this Sunday is "Tricking the Patriarchs: Biblical Matriarchs." This class will explore the ancient texts of the Hebrew Bible and early Christian communities in light of their historical context. Our goal is to understand the text's meaning by learning about the authors, their audiences, their purposes and goals. We will then discern what value (if any) these ancient ideas have for our own day. By avoiding modern, literalist, and presentist readings of scripture, we hope to allow the text to breath and offer us new insights and value in our own spiritual practices. All are welcome. LGBTQ+ affirming. Jewish and Christ tradition, but open to interfaith and skeptical perspectives.

Jericho's Wall - From Rubble to Epic: Reading the violent conquest of Canaan described in the Bible not as a historical account but as Ancient Israel's national epic. Combining different traditions, this story gave meaning to the difficult circumstances Israel faced from the last decades before the exile to Babylon to the resettling of the Holy Land under Persian rule.

Did the Exodus and the conquest of the Holy Land really happened? What can modern archaeology tell us about it? What alternative hypotheses have been suggested?

Rabbinic Judaism took hold in the wake the temple's destruction. OnTuesday, Jan 29, 2019, we looked at what came before: Israelite religion in the First and Second Temple periods. Lecturer: Brian Carwana of Encounter World Religions Centre

Revisiting the Apocrypha

How compatible is the Hebrew Bible with Greek philosophy? As interpreted by the 1st century CE Jewish Egyptian author Philo of Alexandria, the two are completely compatible. We’ll look at how Philo rejects a literal reading of the text to recast Moses as a philosopher king. And we’ll consider how Philo’s work presaged and influenced later Christian understandings of the text.

Scholars have concluded Moses didn't write the Five Books of Moses. Who did? The “Documentary Hypothesis” is the most widely accepted explanation of the Bible's authorship among modern scholars. Although Moses was traditionally considered the author of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Torah, or Pentateuch,) in this lecture we look at historical, archaeological, mythological, and literary evidence that suggests many different sources were compiled primarily during the Babylonian exile, many centuries after Moses would have lived, if he was a historical figure at all. Recorded live at Toronto Centre Place, March 12, 2019. Find out more at www.centreplace.ca