I watched Terminator Salvation this evening, and despite what might be considered a corny ending with a confusion of the metaphorical and the literal, it had enough that was good to make it enjoyable overall. The commercials for the movie annoyingly gave away that one of the characters was a human-machine hybrid of sorts, but presumably that eliminates the need for any spoiler warning here. I was struck by the tactics of both sides: one concerned that they may lose... Read more

Parchment and Pen has done it again – this time it offers a list of “essentials for salvation” followed by lists of other types of essentials and then non-essentials. What is most striking is that the essentials are a list of doctrinal beliefs. According to the New Testament, Jesus himself taught that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor. Yet the list that is offered makes no mention of that. You must believe God exists,... Read more

With a new regeneration of NT Wrong in the blogosphere, it is time to give him or her a proper blogger’s welcome. And we all know how that is done, don’t we? By pointing out that, as the saying goes, Wrong is wrong. It is of course true that we project our own ideals, beliefs, and values onto God (or other figures we idolize, literally or metaphorically). But I simply cannot agree that this makes it meaningless or pointless to... Read more

It seems that the op-ed piece I wrote about the Conservative Bible Project is currently the most viewed opinion piece on Yahoo! It is getting quite a bit of discussion there, as well as on the CS Monitor page on Facebook. And I was worried that the Conservative Bible Project was already getting to be old news. Apparently not! In what may be the icing on this ironic cake, the Conservative Bible Project’s site has a new image, which seems... Read more

Although I don’t recognize myself at all in John Hobbins’ depiction of “liberals” in the field of Biblical studies, I still thought I ought to share this photo of me and Ken Schenck from SBL this year. Perhaps others will see a resemblance that I have failed to… Read more

The Syriac Interlinear Project Call for Participation The Syriac Interlinear Project aims at producing a multi-tier interlinear edition of the Syriac Bible. The project is done with cooperation between Logos Software and Gorgias Press. The text of the New Testament is based on the British and Foreign Bible Society Edition, while the text of the Old Testament is based on the Mosul edition. The results will be published in electronic form by Logos Software. Gorgias Press will publish a printed... Read more

The faculty reading group I’ve organized has gotten a mention on the college’s web site. Thank you once again to all those who offered suggestions for books to read. We’ll meet to discuss the first of our books next week. In other news, The Only True God has been reviewed in ALA’s Choice Vol.47 No.4, December 2009. The review provides a nice summary and categorizes the book as “recommended” for upper-level undergraduates and above as well as for general readers.... Read more

Entering into the discussion of conservatives and Biblical scholarship, Ken Schenck offered a detailed reflection. His most powerful point was about conservative publications as “innoculation” against other views. One doesn’t have to actually successfully make the case for this or that conservative viewpoint – it is often considered to be enough merely that there is a “response” from some well-known conservative author. That hints at a radically different approach to what the mainstream and some conservatives consider “scholarship” – the... Read more

(HT Doc Artz) Read more

The Christian Science Monitor contacted me at the end of last week, asking if I could re-write a blog post of mine about the Conservative Bible Project for use as an op-ed piece. Today it appeared under the headline “Translating the Bible is no joke. But what’s in a political ‘translation’?” Read more