Biblical Studies, Religious Studies and Theology Around the Blogosphere

Religion Nerd explains that religious studies is not the same thing as theology.

Mark Goodacre shares videos of Christopher Tuckett (talking about Q!) and Geza Vermes (about Jewish life in the time of Jesus):

Tim Henderson highlights a chapter by Michael Holmes on textual criticism and the evidence for macro-level stability and micro-level fluidity in the transmission process.

Rod of Alexandria shares why Evangelicals should love the extracanonical Gospel of Mary.

Christopher Hays has an article at Religion Dispatches connecting the Bible and revolution in Egypt.

There’s an article at BioLogos addressing a particular aspect of young-earth creationism’s interpretation of the Bible, namely the idea that there was no death and there were no carnivores before the Fall. If on this point the YEC view is quite an old one, so too are intelligent responses that reject it, as this quote from Thomas Aquinas (who died this day, March 7th, in 1274) indicates:

In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that [pre-Fall] state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man’s sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon.

Michael Dowd has been sharing video from the documentary “A History of Christianity.”