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Something Understood

Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

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Something Understood: Advent

Easter: A Matter of Life and Death

Advent

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, Advent

Robin Griffith-Jones, Master of the Temple Church, re-examines the Nativity stories.

Robin Griffith-Jones, Master of the Temple Church, re-examines the Nativity stories told to us in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels and asks what they say about the meaning of Christmas.

The Reverend Robin Griffith-Jones, Valiant Master of the Temple in London, explores the nativity narratives recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

The familiar tales of virgin birth, shepherds and Magi are intriguing and laden with symbolism and meaning. "There is far more to them, as they were written then and as they have been read over the centuries, than meets the eye," he says.

Robin explores Matthew's desire to show that all the events in his telling are there to fulfil prophecies in the Hebrew scriptures. "In Jesus, Judaism’s most venerable prophecies and vastest hopes were coming to fruition. The prophet Isaiah had written of gentiles and kings coming to Jerusalem’s God-given light, bringing gold and incense and singing the praise of the Lord.” 

Luke meanwhile with his shepherds and the link to John the Baptist’s birth, has another agenda.  “Luke sees two stages in God’s dispensation for the world - the old order, centred in Jerusalem and its Temple, and the new order, realised in Jesus. In Luke’s grand narrative, the new grows out of the old, confirms it and transcends it.” 

To illustrate his thesis, Robin introduces music from Handel and Bach and the poetry of TS Eliot and John Donne.

Presenter: Robin Griffith-Jones
Producer: Michael Wakelin
A TBI production for BBC Radio 4

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