My friend David Capes of Houston, Texas, has been trying to get me to attend a lecture series at The Lanier Theological Library, where he is the director. I finally did. Thanks, David. It is located quite close to Champions Golf Club, where I have played many a round of golf, including many times in the PGA Tour’s Houston Open and once in the U.S. Open. So, last weekend I attended a lecture series in my old hometown of Houston,... Read more
The US and other nations rightly identify the Palestinian political party Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, as a “terrorist organization.” And its recent attack against Israel, which resulted in reportedly 1,400 Jews dead, was most deplorable. Israel has been bombing Gaza ever since and preparing for a ground war to root out and kill the Hamas leadership so that it can never govern the Gaza Strip again. Soon after this Israel-Hamas War got started, US President Joe Biden issued... Read more
I believe the U.S. has been making a big mistake for many years by not connecting its huge foreign aid package of $3 billion per year (for decades and now more) to Israel with a requirement that Israel stay committed to the peace process regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There have been many Israeli leaders who were against Israel being involved in such a peace process because they were against any future creation of a Palestinian state. Talk about selfish. That... Read more
U.S. President Biden went to Israel and met yesterday with its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amidst this Israel-Gaza War that erupted on October 7th when Palestinian militants from Hamas that governs the Palestinian Gaza Strip broke through the boundary fence barrier that separates Gaza from Israel and killed an estimated 1,300 Jews within about 24 hours and took about 200 Jewish hostages back to Gaza. It was the largest number of Jews that have been killed in one day since... Read more
This question could be answered by comparing the DNA of 3,000-year old Philistine skeletons–discovered by the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon–with present-day Palestinian DNA. But I think there are powerful people who don’t want this question answered, starting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2019, Netanyahu rightly affirmed that the DNA comparison between these ancient Philistines skeletons and the DNA of today’s southern Europeans showed what historians and archaeologists had been saying for decades, that the Philistines emigrated... Read more
Israel Defense Forces reportedly has quickly amassed 350,000 reservist troops along the Israel-Gaza Strip border. Israel has announced that it is going to conduct a ground war in the Gaza Strip. Israel says it is going to annihilate Hamas so that it can never govern the Gaza Strip again. Israel is calling for all one million civilians in Gaza City, which is located in the northern portion of the Gaza Strip, to immediately evacuate to the south of the Strip.... Read more
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international relations based in New York City with an office in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1921. Its current president is Michael Froman. Their premier publication is Foreign Affairs. CFA often has public forums. I am a CFR member who receives announcements about these forums. Today, CFR held a public forum entitled, “Update on the Israel-Gaza War,” which I watched with... Read more
My tenth theological book is on track to be self-published in about ten days and be available on amazon.com. It is entitled The Gospel Corrupted: How Church Fathers Made Jesus God. The subtitle echoes titles of two important books in this genre: Richard Rubenstein’s When Jesus Became God and Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God. Most historians of early Christianity, New Testament exegetes, and historical-critical scholars of the New Testament agree that the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and... Read more
U.S. intelligence agencies are saying Iran–which funds and trains Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon–was not directly involved in the Gaza-governing Hamas attacking on Israel last weekend. Yet Jack Sullivan, U.S. National Security Advisor to President Joe Biden, said yesterday that Iran is still “complicit” in the attack because it arms and trains Hamas for war. Well, does that statement suggest that because of this alleged complicity that that gives the U.S. a legitimate reason to enter directly enter... Read more
This post is another account of one of the presentations I watched two weeks ago as I attended the virtual New Insights into the New Testament. Hosted by Dr. Bart Ehrman, we were told it was attended by about 3,000. He gave a presentation. Bart D. Ehrman is professor of Christian Origins at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is an authority on textual criticism of the New Testament and on the study of the historical Jesus.... Read more
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