Last week I was putting up a shelf using a molly bolt. These are bolts that you use to hold something in drywall. I took my drill put the 1/2 in. diameter hole into the wall, then put in the molly. Theoretically this is to hold the screw so then you can hang your self. This particular molly bolt I had purchased was heavy duty, made to hold 100 lbs. After I installed the molly I screwed the bolt into... Read more

Rowan Williams Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014. Available at Amazon.com I read this book over the weekend. Its rather short at only 84 pages and written in a very easy going style. Williams, now Master of Magdalene College, covers the topics of Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, and Prayer, and in each one he had something interesting to say. For Williams, baptism is about going into “the depths” with Jesus, who himself went into the depths of... Read more

The latest issue of Themelios (39.2) is out and features D.A. Carson on “What are Gospel Issues?” A heap of stuff on Jonathan Edwards. Plus a review of HGBJ by Jonathan Huggins. Though admittedly biased, I do like his conclusion: The idea for this project is superb and certainly serves the church well. Bart Ehrman has become well-known for his popular-level books. He is probably the most famous American agnostic/atheist Bible scholar. He writes very well, and his arguments are... Read more

Is the way we work working? A review of The Way we Work, Grffith Review. The way we work has changed profoundly with the two biggest game-changers being technology and globalisation. Rather than making life easier, and creating more leisure, technology has just made us more available. In fact, Australians have amongst the longest working days in developed countries. This new collection of essays, photos, poems and stories on the theme of ‘work’ by Griffith Review is a stimulating look at the modern... Read more

My new book The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus is now out! I’m a very happy little vegemite today. I’ve been working on this for several years. It’s a concerted study of the transmission of the Jesus tradition, the Synoptic Problem, Johannine “Frage”, genre of the Gospels, and canonization of the four Gospels (plus lots of excursuses on things like form criticism, non-canonical gospels, and the text of the gospels in the... Read more

Over at ABC’s Radio National, Aussie Theologian Ben Myers is interviewed by Geoff Wood about the evangelical phase of Bob Dylan’s career. You can read and listen to the interview here. In January 1979, Bob Dylan committed an act that outraged people around the world. It had nothing to do with sex, drugs or rock ‘n’ roll. Well, not directly anyway. In an apartment in West Los Angeles, Dylan met with two pastors from the evangelical Vineyard Fellowship and soon... Read more

An Aussie TV station, SBS, is broadcasting a series called “Living with the Enemy,” including the story of  putting an Anglican minister and a gay couple under the same room for ten days. No second prizes for guessing who the villain is in this show! The adjective “fundamentalist” pretty much gives the game away. I haven’t seen this yet, but I have low expectations. This could have actually been a good opportunity to bring two different parties together, to see... Read more

 A month or so ago I had the privilege of traveling for a second time to Bellingham, WA to teach a course for Logos’ Mobile Education program. That same week Mark Strauss of Bethel Seminary San Diego was also teaching a course. While we were both familiar with each other, it was not until our overlap at Logos that we got to know each other. Mark is a great guy a man of both the academy and the church. I... Read more

Just came across this article, Warren Carter, “Mark and Syria? An Assessment,” ExpT 125.11 (2014): 531-37. It is often argued that Mark’s concern for the temple must indicate that he is in some proximity to the temple, probably from the vantage point of Syria. However, Carter argues that what creates concern and pathos for particular events in the ancient world is not necessarily geographical proximity, but psychological allegiance. I did my own critique of various proposals about the provenance of Mark in... Read more

Thanks to Carey College in NZ is a one hour lecture by Richard Bauckham and Chris Marshall on “Jesus in Context” ably introduced by my friend Sarah Harris. Worth a watch!   Read more