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Jesus associated himself with the "sign of Jonah" on multiple occasions in response to Jewish leaders demanding that he prove his authority. Possible explanations of the sign are examined here with an emphasis on Jesus's statement that he would be "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matt 12:40). A close reading of Jonah 2 reveals that Jesus was describing himself as one who must suffer, but that he was depending upon his Father to rescue him from his descent into death. Unlike traditional explanations which assume that the statement must be restricted to the specific period that Jesus was in the tomb, this approach suggests that Jesus's descent began in the Garden of Gethsemane before he died. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the extensive attention that has been given to Philippians 2:6-11 in relation to its Christology, the possibility that v8 alludes to the story about Jesus in Gethsemane has received only cursory mention when it has been considered at all. Philippians 2:8 and the Gospel tradition converge in depicting Jesus choosing to be obedient to God even to the point of death, in the absence of an interpretation of that death as itself salvific. The historical allusion, offered in the midst of a heavily theologized Christological statement, offers an excellent test case for an approach to history which accepts that fact and interpretation are inseparable, and yet still proceeds under the conviction that critical historiography remains possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lucy Hutchinson’s “Elegies,” which were written in the late seventeenth century, mourn the loss of the poet’s husband, Colonel John Hutchinson, and the loss of a republican form of government in the face of the Restoration. The garden landscapes in the poems that invoke Hutchinson’s estate at Owthorpe are typically read as a figure for a lost Eden. I argue for a different biblical garden, however, the Garden of Gethsemane. Examining the poems’ language of betrayal and grief alongside seventeenth-century exegesis on the Gethsemane episode, I show the correspondence between garden spaces, affect, and sympathetic textual and personal engagement. Using the psychoanalytic concept of conveyance, particularly in its gendered articulation in Julia Kristeva’sBlack Sun, I yoke exegesis to poetry in order to argue that mediating environments are capable of producing both subjects and affective experiences. Moreover, these formal products are contingent, depending on a continuous betrayal of the original lost object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great War began with widespread public euphoria across the combatant nations, with community leaders, political, ecclesiastical and other, giving enthusiastic endorsement to the ‘war effort.’ In addition to simplistic and clichéd proclamations that ‘God is on our side,’ early in the war stories of spiritual phenomena, such as the so-called ‘Angels of Mons’ and the ‘White Comrade’, captured the public imagination. As the war progressed, however, and particularly in the wake of the Battle of the Somme from 1 July 1916, there is a noticeable shift in the spiritual and theological language of the battlefront (if not the home front) — away from angelic visitations bringing divinely ordained victory, and towards the ‘suffering God’ of No Man’s Land. The primary vehicle for this are the war poets, and the dominant symbolic language that of the Passion of Christ, who prays with great anguish in the garden of Gethsemane on the night of his arrest and betrayal that the cup of suffering might pass from him. As that cup will nor pass from Christ, neither would it pass those who endured the trenches of the Western Front. By the end of the war, the transcendent God had become an imminent deity, and the place of visitation was not the heavenly places, but the mud and blood of No Man’s Land. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses about Christian faith in God, and the Christian philosophy. Topics include spiritual formation and philosophy, the trust and faith of Christians in God, and the preaching of Apostle Paul. The Christian belief in son of God Jesus Christ and the garden Gethsemane in Jerusalem are mentioned.

This paper considers the prospects of Erasmus's De taedio Iesu-an embellished recreation of a debate between Erasmus himself and John Colet at Oxford in 1499 over the question whether Christ truly feared for his own death in the Garden of Gethsemane-as an influence on John Calvin's interpretation of Matthew 26:37-39 and parallels in his Commentary on the Gospel Harmony (1555). It examines three aspects that Calvin's commentary shares with Erasmus's De taedio: (1) the use of a passage from Ambrose's Expositio in Lucam, (2) the problem of monothelitism and the two wills of Christ, and (3) the difference between Christ's passions and ours in light of original sin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pursuing a theology of the garden in Oceania, the article develops Ilaitia Tuwere's Fijian theological perspectives with Emmanuel Levinas' philosophy and Talmudic readings. The defining experience in the Oceanic garden is mercy. Through the bodiliness and otherness of Jesus, the chief Gardener, an immemorial truth emerges: the land (vanua) testifies to the mercy (maternity) of God, revealing a garden (were) of justice, repentance, peace, healing and the forgiveness of sins. Indeed, our hope for the reign of God is not useless and for nothing, for it becomes the very source of the fecundity of time and the positive value of history, moving us on with confidence and courage to encounter Edens and Gethsemanes in the Oceanic garden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marian rituals have been the apex of Christian believers' journey for centuries. Although its research importance in many disciplines, Marian devotion and rituals in Israel have been largely neglected. This article outlines several social and religious aspects of ‘the public dimension of the ritual’. These aspects include several lines of conflict and strife taking place between a myriad array of socio-ethnic groups: between the Greek Orthodox and the Palestinian Greek Orthodox communities; between the Palestinian Greek Orthodox communities and clergymen; between Palestinian believers and pilgrims; and between the Greek Orthodox and Jews/Muslim believers. This research is based upon a combination of two principal qualitative methodologies: participant observations which took place over a period of three years and in-depth interviews with believers and clergymen. The fieldwork is focused around a procession taking place in the Old City of Jerusalem at the end of August, celebrating Mary's death and resurrection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Jesus, what potential range of resistance to truth can prevent his follower from greater fruitful Christian living? The article proposes, from Jesus' life ard teachings, a spectrum offive barriers to "unfruitful" living that can hinder deep learning and Christian formation. In the Parable of the Four Soils, three unfruitful soils are depicted. For the two additional barriers, one comes from John 15:4-5, and the other from Jesus' own Garden of Gethsemane experience. Practical implications are drawn for teachers as learners themselves and as facilitators of learning in students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on the gospel of John 18:7--8, 12--13a showing the betrayal of Jesus by one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot and His arrest by the Roman soldiers which took place in Gethsemane. It explains the greatness of God's love for all of us, allowing Himself to be prosecuted and crucified on the cross to save the us from our sins. It also tells us the different ways in which we can show that Christ is Gethsemane's King and Lamb.

The article discusses the alleged deliberate changes in the Gospel of Luke. It examines the Biblical passage from Luke 22: 45 where Jesus found his disciples sleeping for sorrow. The Biblical passage mentions that the disciples were made to sleep for they would not see how an angel has consoled Jesus. The author further examines the association of death in the passage, wherein Jesus was consoled by an angel regarding his death in Gethsemane. It notes whether the death in the soul of a deeply suffering person could hold true for the disciples.