A subject that I’ve asked about here before has come up today on Jesus Creed. They’ve shared a letter from someone who accepts that the Genesis creation accounts can rightly be called mythology. The question that is now being asked is what the appropriate way is to share these stories with a child, and to talk honestly about them, so that the child grows into adulthood not with a literalism that sets them up for an unnecessary crisis of faith,... Read more

In addition to the previews in Google Books mentioned in my last post, I’ve just come across a few more sources about baptism in Gnosticism. Obviously I have yet to read them (since I just found them) but which already appear to be worth sharing. There is a 2007 dissertation by Lubbertus Klaas van Os, “Baptism in the bridal chamber : the gospel of Philip as a Valentinian baptismal.” The entire dissertation is available to read and download. John D. Turner has online... Read more

In connection with one of my current research projects, I was looking for treatments of baptism and the figure of John the Baptist in the Nag Hammadi texts. April DeConick kindly reminded me about the two-volume Nag Hammadi Bibliography. These are very useful volumes, but without the sort of indexes that would make the printed volumes themselves particularly helpful for this kind of search. Today, we just find a preview on Google Books and find the relevant pages, saving literally... Read more

I think, with Neil Godfrey’s help, I finally understand mythicism. It is a belief system in which, when asked about the historical figure of Jesus, you answer by mentioning William Tell, Rama, the God of the Bible and Atlantis. You then assume that these figures are comparable to Jesus of Nazareth in terms of the historical evidence. You then once again blame the other party for unfairly demeaning this viewpoint. Oh, and don’t forget to cite Wikipedia and yourself as your... Read more

The Huffington Post shared some amusing headlines. I liked this one in particular: Read more

Daniel Shenton, the new president of a society you ought to have heard of, had an interesting quote about the burden of proof regarding a particular matter. Please refrain from making comparisons with other views represented among readers of this blog who also talk a lot about the burden of proof. Read more

Someone observed to me recently that I haven’t been mentioning in my Facebook status as much as I used to what pieces of music I’ve been listening to. It is a result of not listening as often as I’d like, more than anything else. Yesterday I was fortunate enough to get in my car and turn on the radio just as one of my favorite pieces of music was starting. Howard Hanson’s Symphony No.2, “Romantic,” is a beautiful piece of music,... Read more

There’s an article at The Bible and Interpretation (based on Craig Keener’s book The Historical Jesus of the Gospels) about the Gospels as sources about the historical figure of Jesus. Given the interest many readers of this blog have in this topic, I thought I should share a link! Read more

Many discussions about religion and science focus on whether evolution via natural selection is compatible with what we find in the Bible. What is often ignored is just how much of our current understanding of the world is simply not in the Bible at all. Ian Monroe decided to go through Darwin’s famous On The Origin Of Species with a black marker and cross out all words that are not in the King James Bible. The result is instructive. Take... Read more

Skepticism that is only skeptical of the views of others, and is only directed at evidence that runs counter to one’s own beliefs and assumptions, isn’t skepticism at all. Faith that only involves believing the the things one already believes, and is only directed at the things that one already presupposes to be true, isn’t faith at all. Read more