On Saturday (if I say either “yesterday” or “today” it will be confusing since it just turned midnight) I drove to IKEA to buy some shelves that are being discontinued and are thus on sale. For the trip (more than three hours each way) I took along language learning materials on CD, including the Pimsleur Swedish course. Once I finished that (there are, alas, only ten half-hour lessons in that set) I tried the Michel Thomas Foundation course in Arabic.... Read more

Jim Linville has posted a lengthy consideration not only of the recent piece by Ronald Hendel about SBL, but also subsequent online discussion thereof (there has been quite a bit even since I last offered a roundup). As usual, he comments not only with intelligence and insight but also humor, largely in the form of LOLcats. Some examples are provided in this post. Marc Cortez has a video demonstrating why cats are not to be trifled with. John Shuck also posted on... Read more

Chapter Two of The Historical Jesus: Five Views is by John Dominic Crossan, and it offers everything we’ve come to expect of Crossan, whether in terms of methodology, content, sharp wit or memorable turns of phrase. Crossan begins with the statement “The historical Jesus was a Galilean Jew within Judaism within the Roman Empire. That, for me, has always been the necessary methodological matrix rather than the unnecessary historical background for any discussion of that first-century figure” (p.105). The importance of context... Read more

After having taken a break last month, Jeremy has resumed posting rankings of the top 50 biblioblogs. Read more

The “How It Should Have Ended” series of videos is usually pretty funny, if not downright hilarious. They’ve now gotten around to giving LOST their brand of treatment, and it is well worth watching (HT Nik at Night). Watch all the way to the end so you don’t miss Hurley’s sign. Read more

There has been a lot of interesting stuff around the blogosphere today, including in unexpected places. I usually look to IO9 for science fiction updates, but today they had a post about developing computer programs to decipher languages, and it was tested on Ugaritic! Meanwhile the blog I recently discovered, Jesus Needs New PR, shared a video of one of the least intelligible “arguments” I’ve ever encountered to support any point of view, anywhere, ever. It came from another blog... Read more

The first chapter of The Historical Jesus: Five Views is authored by Robert M. Price, and makes the case that there was in fact no historical figure behind the beliefs and writings of the early Christians about Jesus of Nazareth. He was, in Price’s estimation, not a historical figure around whom much myth and legend developed, but one that was invented in the imagination of the ancient minds that gave birth to Christianity. Price’s chapter starts by eloquently and accurately describing... Read more

InterVarsity Press kindly sent me a free review copy of The Historical Jesus: Five Views, edited by James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy (IVP Academic, 2009), with contributions by Robert M. Price, John Dominic Crossan, Luke Timothy Johnson, James D. G. Dunn and Darrell L. Bock. I have been looking forward to reading this book for some time, and am glad that the summer has finally afforded me the opportunity. The book’s introduction does a good job of introducing... Read more

In addition to responding to a recent IO9 post about Christian science fiction, a post today at TheoFantastique also shares the ultimate Christian sci-fi nerd bumper sticker/decal: Read more

In a follow-up to his previous post on what Jesus claimed, Andrew Perriman has another post focusing on Jesus’ actions and what they suggest about Jesus’ self-understanding. In it he interacts with both primary and secondary source material of relevance. Read more