The Bible and Culture

Here's a link to a Forbes article where Dan Wallace says a bit more about the newly discovered Mark fragments, that at least one epigrapher says are from the first century A.D.http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2012/02/27/fragments-of-marks-gospel-may-date-to-1st-century/ … [Read more...]

(The following is a poem by my friend and editor at Eerdmans, Michael Thomson, a gifted writer in his own right).If life were made of light and laughter, How be? How does this sacrament play? Part improvisation, part cacophony, The movement, the music, the muse. And in the lengthening of the day — Soothing in symmetry of fear and beauty, Not a science, but a magic, an alchemy, Angels conjure red from skies of gray, Ever beckoning souls, each to the other.If we be tapestry of d … [Read more...]

Our friends the Minions are at it again.... There will be a Despicable Me 2 film appearing in the summer of 2013...... in the meanwhile, it is clear the Minions have been listening to classic Beach Boys tunes...... check this out... (Kudos to Jason Myers)http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/universal/despicableme2/ … [Read more...]

(For those who have asked, the way to donate to the Christy Ann Witherington scholarship fund is by going to https://www.asburyseminary.edu/give/give-online , filling out the form and specifying under the "other" category the "Christy Witherington Scholarship". Of course, you can also mail checks to the Asbury Seminary Advancement Office and just specify the scholarship on the check memo or in a note).Ann and I wrote the following poem for the ebook.WHEN A DAUGHTER … [Read more...]

Earliest Christian Tomb? This year’s hoo-ha by larryhurtadoWell, Easter is approaching and so it's time for someone to declare this year's fantastic new discovery that will radically re-orient our understanding of early Christianity, Jesus, whatever. And, this year's contestant is: "The Earliest Christian Tomb," courtesy of Mssrs James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici.The popular press love such stories and duly rush them into print, largely because they know that it will garner readers, w … [Read more...]

Two of the more controverted verses in all of the Gospel of Mark are Mark 8.38 and 9.1. We intend to discuss them in some detail. If you have read many scholarly commentaries on Mark, then you will know that these verses have a long history of being belabored, and are often used to prove that Mark, bless his little heart, and perhaps even Jesus, had a flawed eschatology. They predicted the timing of the second coming wrongly. This critique goes back at least as far as the turn of the 20th … [Read more...]

Strange winds are blowing in the field of Biblical Studies these days, and some of them involve clouds that carry no rain, and promise no lasting crops. What I am referring to is the growing trend to assume that you should be able to do a higher degree in the Bible without: 1) learning any of the Biblical languages, and 2) without learning the proper history of the Biblical cultures and times, and 3) without assuming that these ancient texts need to be studied in their original contexts, … [Read more...]

Here is the news we have long been waiting for. Matthew Kalman is the one reporter who sat through the whole year after year trial. Here is his report on the judge's final verdict today.MATTHEW KALMAN Jerusalem— Special to Globe and Mail Update Wednesday, Mar. 14, 2012A Roman-era burial box inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” was reprieved from the scrapheap of history on Wednesday when a Jerusalem judge completely exonerated an Israeli antiquities collector who had b … [Read more...]

One of the problems Christians have in reading the New Testament is that their scope of semantic understanding is limited by translation. What I mean by this is that translators have to make choices about the meanings of words. Take for example the word euangellion. It simply means good news, as opposed to bad news, and is not yet a technical term for a particular kind of literature, namely a gospel. Probably it should be translated 'good news' (not in caps) most everywhere you find it in … [Read more...]