I didn’t know what else to call this post, since there was so much in the blogosphere over the past couple of days, and it seemed worth mentioning. This post includes the most recent biblioblog activity, as well as stuff on other topics that the Bible (and thus supplemental in that way) and non-academic posts of interest (and thus supplemental in another way).
But let me begin by highlighting something that I had intended to include in the carnival, but somehow neglected to. Jim Davila kindly reminded me of the discovery that made the news in April, about the discovery of fragments of 2 Enoch in Coptic. More recently he shared an update on Rachel Elior’s theory about the Dead Sea Scrolls.
April DeConick has been continuing the series (“Creating Jesus”) that was mentioned in the carnival. She is up to post #5, which is beginning to address what the early Christians did when their messianic expectations were not met.
Ephemeral Thoughts has a post on Scripture as inspired, not inerrant. Anumma has a post on essential questions and the Book of Job. Ben Witherington highlights A. N. Wilson’s recent return to Christianity. Euangelion has a post about the rule of faith and the unity of Scripture. Phil Sumpter points to free audio and video from Westminster Seminary. Mike Koke asks if there is any room for apologetics, as well as thinking further about hermeneutics of suspicion. Ken Schenck has thoughts on church membership. The Lead looks at those who grew up unreligious and end up in church, and concludes with this great quote:
So we in the Church, in trying to attract and keep members, tell ourselves to act more worldly.
And the non-religious tell themselves to act more religious and provide what religion provides to keep non-religious people non-religious.
What a country!
I also had a much briefer version of my review of Bart Ehrman’s Jesus, Interrupted published on my college’s web site. Jesus Creed also quotes Ehrman on the Bible. Steve Matheson posted on theistic embryology. The Evolution of the Mystery has been blogging both Kaufmann and Dylan.
I’ve also finally cracked the mystery of NT Wrong’s identity. His blogging has been associated with England, Australia, and most recently Los Angeles. There can no longer be any doubt. NT Wrong is surely none other than the elusive… Charles Widmore! On a more serious subject (i.e. the plot of LOST, rather than an anonymous semi-ex-blogger’s identity), I think I may have figured out what the temporal paradox is that is at the heart of recent plot developments. What if 1970s Ellie, having realized that she killed her son, briefly finds comfort in the arms of Charles Widmore. As a result, a son is conceived, who will later go by the name Daniel Faraday. And there’s the paradox. Unless Eloise sends her son to the island to be shot by her, then he will never exist in the first place. And so the only way to allow him to have his all too short and tragic life is to send him to his early death. What would you do?
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