The Bible and Culture

The glass was thick and wavy, In the decrepit manse by the road You could see the outside barely Curvy, not well disclosed. The dust of ages had settled Upon the clapboard floor, Must hung in the air Like it’d been there evermore. The cobwebs on the eaves Had a settled look Here for the duration However long it took. The old bookshelf listed To the right hand side And on its shelf a single book The Good Book did abide. I picked up the tome The binding now quite loose Not from … [Read more...]

Tools of the Trade . . . Encore larryhurtado | September 5, 2011 at 9:33 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pYZXr-bt Well, my posting yesterday on "Tools of the Trade" has already generated a number of comments, several of which raise some reasonable questions.  So, instead of replying to them individually, I'll try to do so in this further posting.  I'll attempt to be succinct, but this will be longer-than-most-of-mine posting. First, some comments have to do … [Read more...]

… [Read more...]

In this post Scot and I will have a dialogue about points I want some clarification on, and points in which we may have some differences.   Let me say from the outset,  that I think this book is fundamentally right in what it objects to about the soterian Gospel, and in what it asserts is the real full Gospel, focused on Jesus,  not just on his soterological benefits. Comment and Question One:  On pp. 35-36 you say that the story of the Bible is the story of Israel.  I do not entirely … [Read more...]

For close to forty years Pat Metheny, and his right hand man Lyle Mays, have created some of the most influential and popular jazz in the whole post-Coltrane, post-Miles era, and yes he still wears his hair and his shirts as if he was a refugee from the 60s.   As is so often the case, though the Pat Metheny Group (and various individual permutations with Pat teaming up with others or going solo) has had success in the U.S., it has been even more wildly successful in Europe.   On top of all … [Read more...]

Some movies are worth remaking,  and Ha Hov (the original name of the movie in Hebrew) is one of them.  Here is the publicity summary of the movie---- "The espionage thriller begins in 1997, as shocking news reaches retired Mossad secret agents Rachel (Helen Mirren) and Stephan (Tom Wilkinson) about their former colleague David (Ciarán Hinds). All three have been venerated for decades by their country because of the mission that they undertook back in 1966, when the trio (portrayed, … [Read more...]

The following is a helpful post by my friend Larry Hurtado. "Scriptures" and "Canon" larryhurtado | August 30, 2011 at 10:04 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pYZXr-ba A few days ago a former PhD student shared with me the anonymised reviews of a book proposal, one of which was a bit ill-tempered, and also ill-informed (and which also directed some of its ire against me).   One of the substantive errors was the claim that it is anachronistic to refer to … [Read more...]

9-11---    Ten Years After I was reading the latest issue of CT (Christianity Today) which naturally enough had quotes from various Christian leaders about the impact of 9-11.  The one that hit me the hardest and was most revealing was the one by my friend the good bishop Will Willimon.    Here is what he said: On 9/11 I thought, For the most powerful, militarized nation in the world also to think of itself as an innocent victim is deadly. It was a rare prophetic moment for me, … [Read more...]

Q.  Let’s start with a question I get asked a lot which usually takes the form---- ‘What!  Another book by you?   What prompted you to write yet another book and why this book in particular? Yes, I get asked that question at times, and as we enter into … what do we call this part of our careers, Ben?, because we don’t want to admit we are starting to be the veterans in the circle … the writing habit has become part of how we live. But, each book has its own genesis and this … [Read more...]

Type: There is something magical about going to a good concert.  It moves you, you feel good about life, you remember why you bought that CD or downloaded that song, it reaches you in places that mere words fail to reach.  I've been going to concerts since I was very small indeed, beginning with community concerts of a classical nature which my Mom took me to as a child.  I remember going to see the great violinist Isaac Stern,  who was when he caught me and my friend … [Read more...]