Since not all comments on blogs are either appropriate or solid gold, Larry Hurtado weighs in with his list of dictums….. See what you think. —- Postings, Comments, and Productive Discussion: Some Groundrules by larryhurtado When I mentioned to a few fellow scholars who were themselves experienced bloggers a couple of years ago that I was planning on launching a blog site, one of the strongly given pieces of advice was “Don’t allow comments!” I chose otherwise, however, as my... Read more

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San Francisco is a remarkable place in many ways. The weather is usually clement, and when I was there in September it was beautifully sunny and in the 70s and the flowers were gorgeous. Not to mention my hotel was a short walk from the Ferrari dealership, and next to a beautiful bay. My host Dr. John Shouse and his colleagues were wonderful and took me to the San Fran Symphony where we saw Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and Shostakovich’s massive... Read more

Here are two posts of Larry Hurtado in response to the mythicists. See what you think. BW3 On Competence, Scholarly Authority, and Open Discussion by larryhurtado In the furore of recent days after my postings about some recent contenders that Jesus never lived, I’ve derived a few observations. Advocates of the so-called “mythicist” position (a historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, never lived) who have commented on this site have rather consistently either offered putative bases that turn out to be... Read more

Ben Affleck has come a long way as an actor, and now also as a maker of films, and his new film ‘Argo’ is living proof of it. Based on a true story about six U.S. embassy workers in Teheran who became trapped in the Canadian embassy in 1979 during the violent protests against the U.S. for giving asylum and aide to the former Shah of Iran, here is one more case where truth is stranger than fiction. Truly. Here... Read more

Here is Dr. Alexander, noted neuro-scientist from Harvard who had an experience of the ‘other’ non-material dimension of reality, while his brain was ‘off’. Below is a picture from the article itself of part of what he describes that he saw. And here is a link to this wonderful article which puts a huge question mark into the materialist argument that the mind=the brain. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/07/proof-of-heaven-a-doctor-s-experience-with-the-afterlife.html Read more

I must confess, while I like Bruce Springsteen, there was a Boss before Springsteen, and his name was Sinatra. Nevertheless, the Asbury Park flash is a good representative sample of classic rock n’ roll, and he has written some fine songs, and even done some fine entire albums (my personal favorites would include the early Born to Run album, and some of his more acoustic stuff, like The Rising). But for you Springsteen fans here is a little quiz (with... Read more

We’ve all seen the T shirts, and the T-bow eye black touting Phil. 4.13. And the translation always is ‘I can do all things in Him who strengthens me’. Leap tall buildings in a single bound, overcome all odds, go boldly where no one has gone before. You get the picture. The problem is, that this translation absolutely makes no sense of the context, and is not a literal rendering of the verse in question at all. The verb ‘to... Read more

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