controversy erupts when Christianity Today publishes an article questioning the crucifixion of Jesus with nails.

The Supreme Court debates the right of parents to opt out their kids from LGBTQ books being read in elementary schools.

And both the New York Times and USA Today post articles on the return to church, specifically

among young men and increased interest in the supernatural in our culture today. These are the

stories we'll discuss. We also suggest some of your excellent questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell.

I'm your co-host, Scott Ray. This is the Think Bivocally Weekly Cultural Update, brought to by Talbot School Theology, Biola University.

Scott, this story was all over the Christian world, probably not much beyond, but there's some important theological and practical issues at play.

So 10 days ago, leading into Easter on April 14th,

there's an article in Christianity today by one of the editors, Daniel Silman, and the question was,

was Jesus crucified with nails? And the subtitle is why one evangelical Bible scholar thinks the answer might be no.

Now, it starts off by saying, telling the story of Christ's death, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John simply say the Roman soldiers crucified him. They don't say how. Each of the Gospels

include specific details about the soldier's method of dividing his clothes,

but none described the way soldiers put him on the cross.

There are no nails mentioned in any of the four accounts of Christ's death.

Now, the article says, closely reading the Bible, looking at the long historical record of Rome crucifixion and examining the archaeological record, Garcia, who's the scholar that's quoted

in here, has come to the conclusion that crucifixion might have been done with ropes.

He says, I basically find it interesting.

It could be there were nails or could be there weren't nails.

Now, the article has a lot of background information I won't go into and makes the point

that nails aren't required to kill somebody.

And crucifixion still would have been painful, of course.

The article does point out that there's a few archaeological discoveries of nails.

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