Proposition Fifteen of Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One asserts that the current debates about Intelligent Design and fundamentally about purpose. Walton points out early on that there is no necessary contradiction between something being viewed as an “act of God” and yet also being subject to scientific investigation, since “Everything that exists and everything that happens is, in Christian thinking, ultimately an act of God” (p.126). It is not clear, however, whether at this point he is backtracking... Read more

A blog entry was drawn to my attention yesterday, entitled “Talking About Blogging in Tenure and Application Documents“. It is by Nels P. Highberg on the blog ProfHacker. Since there are many academic bloggers who are likely to read this, I thought I’d share it. There is on the whole a lot of interesting stuff on that blog for educators, so it is worth taking a look around while you’re there! Read more

Boulders 2 Bits, in response to my previous post about the term “Deuteronomistic”, has posted what I can only conclude is the definitive, comprehensive list of terms related to, based on, or puns of Deuteronomy. Take a look. It’s not simply fantastic, not simply hilarious, it is truly deuteronomaniacal! Read more

I tried, I really did, to go along with the scholarly preference for referring to the work that runs from Joshua through 2 Kings, the Former Prophets as it is designated in the Jewish canon, as the “Deuteronomistic History“. But I’ve decided to go with “Deuteronomic History” not only because “Deuteronomistic History” is cumbersome (and hard for most undergraduates to pronounce), nor primarily because “deuteronomic” seems to be a more appropriate adjective, but because linguistically “deuteronomistic” seems to invite odd... Read more

Mark Goodacre’s NT Blog featured two videos on extracanonical texts: the Oxyrhynchus Hymn set to music, and a clip from a documentary about the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices. Koinonia and Near Emmaus pointed out that we can read John Walton’s commentary on Genesis online. Several blogs have shared a video with a song for learning the Greek alphabet. Nijay Gupta pointed out some of John Goldingay’s lectures on iTunes. Wes Ellis shares a video featuring Barbara Rossing addressing... Read more

Science educators in the conservative Christian regions of the United States known collectively as the “Bible belt” have long been praying for a sign from the Lord, one that would both confirm their rightness in continuing to teach (when allowed to by school boards) the scientific theory of biological evolution, and also help them persuade local residents in their areas of the overwhelming evidence for evolution. God answered their prayers in a manner that made the TV news tonight, as... Read more

For those who will be attending the bibliobloggers’ dinner at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in New Orleans this year, Jim West has provided directions as well as a photo that will clarify how to reach the location if you are skydiving to it. Read more

I loved the part of the last episode of Heroes [SPOILER WARNING] where Hiro repeatedly goes back in time to try to prevent events from unfolding in which an employee of his family corporation photocopied a certain part of his body, got fired, and then wants to kill himself by throwing himself off the building. Hiro makes repeated attempts to change history by stealing the toner from photocopiers, but to no avail. Eventually, he talks to the person on the... Read more

The Lead asked a question about how those of us who don’t treat “the Fall” as a literal description of a historical event do interpret it. Here’s what I wrote: If by “the Fall” what is being referred to is the story in Genesis 3, then I understand it as about “adam” in the Hebrew meaning of the term – it isn’t a name, it is the word for “human being”, and I take the story as being about us... Read more

Karyn Traphagen has shared a selection of English sentences that show why no one should ever view English as easy and other languages as more difficult by comparison. Read more