On 29 April 2024, we published an article seeking questions from our churches on Israel and Palestine, the current conflict, the Bible, or anything thought relevant to this that might be answered by one of our Aotearoa Baptist Biblical Scholars.

Philip Church is a member of Royal Oak Baptist Church and a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Theology at Laidlaw College in Auckland. He has a PhD in New Testament and has taught Biblical Languages and Old and New Testament courses at Laidlaw for 15 years. In his retirement he has taught block courses in several countries in the Majority World. Philip has a longstanding interest in the Middle East and has travelled there several times, he has a particular interest in the Hebrews and the temple.

Thank you to those who sent in questions. To answer them, some questions have been conflated or dissected to respond more easily to what has been considered the underlying issue. Due to the number of questions, this was published as instalments over several weeks. Not every question submitted got a response. 

Printable version

Read the articles online below. The six parts of this series have also been formatted for printing on A4 in one 28-page PDF.