I find myself doing lots of videos these days for Ridley, Logos, and Zondervan. So I wonder what it would be like if the Simpsons character Troy McClure introduced some Bible and theology videos. Hi, I’m actor Troy McClure, you might remember me from such theological videos as … Prepping for Presbyterians: How to Face the Last Days with Nothing More than a Pocket Knife and the Westminster Confession Revelation 13 – Why Michael Jackson will Return as the Anti-Christ in... Read more

To coincide with the publication of my new book, Jesus the Eternal Son, Eerdmans has put together a quiz about christology in the NT, patristic responses to heresy, and Greco-Roman ideas on deification. It is very, very hard. I know, because I wrote it! The average score is 3/10! Can you do better? Read more

I just came across this elegant quotation from N.T. Wright about John’s Gospel: John stands out from the rest of the New Testament. With Paul we are in the seminar room: we are arguing the thing out, looking up references, taking notes, and then being pushed out into the world to preach the gospel to the nations. Matthew takes us into the synagogue, where the people of God are learning to recognize Jesus as their King, their Emmanuel. Mark writes... Read more

Over at Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight reviews my book An Anomalous Jew: Paul among Jews, Greeks, and Romans. It’s quite positive, and I think Scot nails me and the book with these words: If you read this carefully — and Bird often requires careful readings — you see the back and forth of the salvation historical and the apocalyptic as well as both continuity and discontinuity. I found this dialectic and both-and throughout the first few chapters. Bird’s Paul is closer to the “old” or... Read more

Is my Identity Inherited or Created? The other day I took my kids to see the latest kids film, The Smurfs: The Lost Village, which has the same delightful mix of adventure and slapstick as the previous Smurf films. The plot centers on Smurfette, the only female smurf of the village, who does not have an identity. She’s not clumsy, hefty, nosey, or, well, anything, she’s just an “ette,” and needs to figure out what that means. The plot of... Read more

If you’re in Melbourne, save the date, because Lynn Cohick will be delivering the annual Leon Morris Lecture at Ridley College. Christ our Peace: Redemption, Reconciliation and Radical Community in the Letter to the Ephesians Annual Leon Morris Lecture Friday 21st July 5:15 pm for a 5:45 pm lecture Speaker: Lynn Cohick The Leon Morris Lecture is an annual lecture in New Testament studies in memory of former principal Leon Morris. This year, Lynn Cohick from Wheaton College will speak on... Read more

In light of Mark Zuckerberg’s comments that Facebook can act like kind of a church, over at Christian Today, I have an article on Why Mark Zuckerberg will never be my pastor: I love my Facebook account. It is a great way to catch up with friends and connect with my former students. But I’m just not prepared to worship in it or offer worship to it. And while I think Zuckerberg is a great tech entrepreneur, he’s no St Anthony, not even a... Read more

Susannah Herschel has a great book called The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton Uni Press, 2010). There is a great podcast interview with Heschel over at OnScript which I thoroughly recommend. The blurb alone is compelling and alarming!!! Was Jesus a Nazi? During the Third Reich, German Protestant theologians, motivated by racism and tapping into traditional Christian anti-Semitism, redefined Jesus as an Aryan and Christianity as a religion at war with Judaism. In 1939, these... Read more

Dr. Brian Wright, one of my former PhD students, has his thesis soon to be published by Fortress on Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus: A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices, already available for pre-order. It is a great study of ancient book culture, the surprising extent of literacy in the ancient world, and how reading communities helped preserve the Jesus traditions. Here’s the blurb. Much of the contemporary discussion of the Jesus tradition has focused on aspects of... Read more