I am trying to figure out why Stephen L. Harris has produced two very similar textbooks on the Bible, and what if anything makes one better than the other. As far as I can see at the moment, Exploring the Bible is conveniently divided into chapters that correspond closely to the number of times a class meets in a semester, but Understanding the Bible has color photos and diagrams. If anyone has any light to shed on what the differences... Read more

I shared three unrelated links earlier, and now have three pictures from the blogosphere that struck me. First, this creative piece shared by Peter Rollins: The message (if you read the caption) is “Be Born Again” and it turns out to be “evangelistic” – apparently trying to attract business to a plastic surgeon! Next, the British Library’s digitized manuscripts blog provides a glimpse at how they recover the earlier underlying text from a palimpsest. And finally, Sherry shared this motto-bearing image. Read more

“So what is it that makes this case so unusual, doctor?” asked the captain of the Zog ship. “Well, you know this single-celled organism that we discovered? It appears to be ‘unwell’, and yet the exact cause of the ‘ailment’ is almost impossible to determine” replied the Zog expedition’s chief scientist. “Please, do explain further,”said the ship’s captain, genuinely interested in the life-form that they had discovered. “As far as we can determine,” the scientist explained, “this life form contains... Read more

Judy Redman explores the distinction between provable, probable and true in historical investigation. Carmen Andres explores the seemingly similar offers of Jacob and the Smoke Monster on last night’s episode of LOST. And the Unofficial Biblioblog List has asked for those bibliobloggers who have papers accepted for next November’s SBL annual meeting in Atlanta to let them know. Read more

Noticing that two blogs I subscribe to featured congratulations to winners of The 2010 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise, I want to add my own voice and congratulate one of the winners, my friend and colleague Brent Hege. The award is for his book Faith at the Intersection of History and Experience: The Theology of Georg Wobbermin. Congratulations, Brent! Read more

Wow, there really are a lot of these “How It Should Have Ended” cartoons, and all the ones I’ve seen so far are entertaining. There are ones for The Matrix, Avatar and Lord of the Rings. Here’s “How Star Wars Episode IV Should Have Ended”: And in case you’ve never seen it, here’s The Matrix running on Windows XP, which provides another alternate ending of sorts: Read more

A friend of mine drew my attention to today’s comic at XKCD:  It is at the intersection of religion and science fiction, so I felt I had to share it. But I’m not sure I get it. Is this suggesting that the voice from the bush is…C3P0?! Is the idea that it was against his programming to impersonate a deity, but once he started, he found it hard to stop? Read more

Monotheism of an absolute sort has a high probability of producing a rather boring story. One ultimate will, with no opposition, no rival, no equal. We see it depicted in Genesis 1 to at least a certain extent. Even if the origin of the original chaos is left unaddressed, we still have a depiction of a will that speaks and it is done, with no other characters unless that sovereign entity wills them to be. If he wills, they cease to be.... Read more

HT SF Signal Read more

Gordon Glover has made two amusing cartoon videos on Intelligent Design: I apologize for the delay in sharing these – I’ve known about them for a few days but didn’t manage to watch them until today. Read more