Because very few of us regularly sit down and read entire books of the Bible from start to finish in one or just a few readings, we don’t often think about why the author of a particular book put a story where it is in the narrative. For example, Matthew...

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4 BCE. The likely year of Jesus’ birth. Caesar Augustus was emperor, the man previously known as Octavius, and great-nephew of Julius Caesar. Wikipedia says in its introduction to the entry about Caesar Augustus that he was one of the most effective leaders in human history. This interpretation depends upon...

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