Here’s another excellent post by my friend Larry Hurtado. I entirely agree with him on this matter. What was in the original inspired text written by the NT authors is what should be considered canonical and Biblical, PLUS NOTHING. No later additions. Text determines canon, not the other way around, see my Baylor Press book What’s In a Word, and my Living Word of God, also by Baylor. BW3 More on Rethinking the Textual Transmission of the Gospels by larryhurtado... Read more

Here’s another excellent nuanced post from Larry Hurtado on ancient literacy levels…. BW3 A few decades ago, it became fashionable in some scholarly circles, including NT/Christian Origins, to hold the view that in the Roman period there was an extremely low level of literacy, and that only elite levels of society had that skill. One still sees this view touted today (typically by those echoing what they believe to be authoritative pronouncements on the matter by others). But a number... Read more

Here’s a helpful post by my old friend Larry Hurtado….. see what you think. BW3 by larryhurtado In a number of blog postings and publications I’ve referred to “copyists” and distinguished their work (copying a text by hand) from “readers/users” of texts (individuals who invested time in studying a text, and who might well make changes to it, believing that thereby they were correcting some error in their copy or were removing ambiguities, or who might add marginal notes, etc.).... Read more

Recently one of our dear friends in Lexington died suddenly in her sleep. She was my age, and so, not ancient (no snarky remarks please on my creeping decrepitude). And frankly, everyone was shocked, me included. I’d seen her not long before in our Sunday school class and she seemed the picture of health. Why exactly is it that we continue to be so shocked by death in many (not all) cases? Why does it seem such an unexpected outcome?... Read more

In an age in which people are not only complaining about lying politicians but even about an a-moral if not immoral President (and that’s an understatement) it might be useful to make some distinctions between truth and honesty. Honesty does not simply mean ‘telling the truth’. It is a term which means ‘telling the truth as you genuinely believe it to be’ But of course, we all can be mistaken and often are. So when someone (wrongly) but genuinely says... Read more

I’ve been a big fan of Ian Rankin for a long time. When I was in England on sabbatical five years ago, I binge read all the volumes in the John Rebus series I had missed before. Here’s the pre-pub summary from Amazon on this latest 384 page crime thriller…. “Rebus’ retirement is disrupted once again when skeletal remains are identified as a private investigator who went missing over a decade earlier. The remains, found in a rusted car in... Read more

The story of Freddie Mercury is in some ways the tragic artist story. Here’s just a brief note from Wiki about his background which none of us really knew about until recently. “Farrokh Bulsara (5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991), known professionally as Freddie Mercury, was a British singer, songwriter and record producer, best known as the lead vocalist of the rock band Queen. He was known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range. Mercury wrote numerous... Read more

First of all, thanks to the ever alert Jim for sending me this story along…. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/740092/biblical-prophecy-messiah-return-israel-western-wall So…. what’s wrong with this picture in the story? Lots, it turns out. In the first place, there is no prophecy in the Bible about a snake crawling out of the Temple Mount wall being a sign of the coming or return of the Messiah. This idea comes from Jewish mysticism of an ultra-orthodox sort, and is not Biblical at all. But there is... Read more

First of all, this should certainly get a nomination for picture of the year. It’s terrific, and both Vigo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali deserve acting awards. Secondly, this is a true story, and so very timely with the resurgence of racism and all sorts of prejudice in our culture. It is set in 1962 basically in the South, and sadly we white Southerners (and other Americans too) have not made nearly enough progress since then in regard to the sin... Read more

Here’s an excellent recent article from the NY Times interviewing a variety of young Christians, some of whom identify as Evangelical. See what you think…. BW3 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/us/young-evangelicals-politics-midterms.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage Read more