The Bible and Culture

Watching March Madness this season has reminded me once again that there is such a difference between a partisan and a fan. A partisan is someone who is a supporter of a particular team, because it is THAT team, 'my team'. A partisan doesn't much care about other teams, or watching basketball for the joy of the sport or its athleticism. A partisan simple likes his team, wants them to win, and gets a sort of vicarious high when they do, and an equally vicarious low when they don't. A … [Read more...]

Archbishop of Canterbury to Step Down at End of Year By JOHN F. BURNS and ALAN COWELLLONDON — After a decade of struggling inconclusively to keep the worldwide Anglican Communion from breaking apart over intractable issues like women clergy, gay bishops and same-sex marriage, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, announced Friday that he would step down at the end of the year to take up a senior position atThe archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan W … [Read more...]

Here are some wonderful selections from an early jazz show on the BBC in 1964-65 and it includes luminaries such as North Carolina's own Theolonius Monk, the Bill Evans Trio, the Oscar Peterson Trio, Milt Jackson and the Modern Jazz Quartet. I can especially recommend to you the Bill Evans full hour and 10 minute segments, especially the ballads.http://www.openculture.com/2012/02/thelonious_monk_bill_evans_and_more_on_the_classic_ijazz_625i_show.html … [Read more...]

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...]