It’s time to continue my ongoing review of John H. Walton’s book The Lost World of Genesis One (and to express my gratitude to IVP for sending me a gratis copy). Proposition 14 makes a point with potentially wide ramifications, namely that it is inappropriate to distinguish God’s roles as creator and sustainer too starkly. Walton recommends (p.119) avoiding two extremes: deism (God creates and is done) and micromanagement (God’s creation is eternally ongoing/repeating). Perhaps what struck me most is... Read more

A new FTC guideline on “endorsements” singles oug blogs for attention. Here are some examples from relevant sections of the FTC’s Endorsement Guides Notice: …a blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself. In this situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things,... Read more

Such a substantial number of posts related to the Bible, its interpretation, its historical accuracy and various other subjects of interest have appeared on blogs I read over the past few hours, that a round-up seemed in order. First, there’s a post at A God-Sized Puzzle which continues a series inspired by some images I created a while back. Boulders 2 Bits has an interview with Pete Enns. Science and the Sacred addresses science education among Christians. Jesus Creed touches... Read more

This video, offering church history in 4 minutes to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire”, seemed worth sharing: HT Irenic Thoughts Read more

I’ve long been struck by the total lack of polemic in Amos against Ba’al and other deities, a polemic that typifies his close contemporary Hosea, and which will be taken up by the later prophetic tradition and eventually come to characterize much other Biblical literature (in particular the Deuteronomic material). It is now becoming clear to me that the same can be said of Isaiah of Jerusalem, whose emphases resemble those of Amos (a fellow Judahite prophet). What’s more, there... Read more

I realized after writing the previous post that reference to a more familiar medium of communication might be more apt to the point I was making. TV shows in the present day almost always have more than one writer involved. Devoted fans watch shows repeatedly and discuss the coherence of the evolving narrative, apparent discrepancies and contradictions, and much else. Perhaps that is the standard to which those who claim to take the Bible seriously in our time ought to... Read more

Today in my class on the Bible we’re up to the Book of Isaiah. Academic study of Isaiah cannot avoid discussion of its apparent composite authorship. Scholarly theories about there being more than one author result from a careful reading of the text, and observation of important details such as the overlap with 2 Kings, followed by a radical change of style, message and implied context (the Babylonian exile is assumed in the present-tense). I remember well from my undergraduate... Read more

Today in my Sunday school class we discussed the difficulties historians have if they try to fit together the information from Matthew and Luke about the birth and infancy of Jesus. The dates, place of origin and geographical movements seem difficult if not impossible to reconcile. In the process, we talked about our cultural assumptions about “history” and how these differ from ancient authors in general and historians in particular. We also discussed other issues of cultural background, such as... Read more

I received an error message today as I was trying to post something – an alert that a blog is not allowed to have more than 2,000 labels. My first thought was “How arbitrary! How restrictive!” My second thought was “I have 2,000 labels?!?!” I probably won’t leave it up for long, but I’ve decided that, before trying to clear out some of the labels used only once, I should share the list of labels and keywords with you. If... Read more

Someone drew an article to my attention that explores the mystical and fantastic in recent sci-fi, and asks whether it is overtaking the scientific component, looking at the example of the recent movie 9. I wonder if the “y” in SyFy (the new name of the Sci-Fi Channel) is from “mYsticism”… Read more