I was surprised to find that someone found their way to my blog by searching for “butler, baker and the candlestick maker in the bible“. It led them here. Do you think they found what they were looking for? Read more

Proposition three is that the Hebrew verb bara’ has a functional focus. Walton starts off by emphasizing that reading the Bible in English is really of no help whatsoever. The issue is not what the English word “create” means, but what the Hebrew word that is usually translated that was in Genesis 1 means. No amount of discussion of English can answer that. And thus it is clear that this is a problem for those who emphasize the need to... Read more

The Biblioblog Top 50 for this past month has been posted. It isn’t fair really – there are still a few hours for West Coast bloggers to get their rankings up. Ah, well. Jim West hung onto first place using the same method as in previous months: a dozen short posts on total depravity each day translates into a dozen hits per day from those who subscribe to your RSS feed. The biggest mover is Scripture Zealot who jumped 36... Read more

This summer, the pastor of my church has been conducting a series on Baptist basics, and so my own Sunday school class has been merged in with that one. Today was the last day, and next week I’ll be back to teaching Sunday school again. We discussed a few options. One was to return to the series on when Christians disagree (in fact, the pastor’s series could be viewed as fitting under that heading, and perhaps it could have been... Read more

I recently had drawn to my attention a very useful online database of academic treatments of science fiction and/or fantasy. There’s a lot on religion (my own main interest), but also much much more. Read more

The second proposition or chapter in Walton’s recent book The Lost World of Genesis One emphasizes the functional orientation of ancient cosmology. Walton begins by asking what it means for something to “exist”, and in the process he illustrates how existence in numerous cases is not about material or material existence. Curricula may exist in printed form or in a computer file, but really a curriculum exists first and foremost functionally, organizing a university course. In the same way a... Read more

There have been lots of posts this weekend that ought not to be missed. First, Mark Vernon has an insightful and provocative post on Christian agnosticism. Elsewhere there’s a great analogy that gives a sense of what the Gospel might have sounded like to its earliest hearers. Funnily enough, Mark Goodacre has a podcast on Paul’s sense of humor, while Phil Harland has a whole series on Paul and his communities. James Tabor blogged about the identity of the Beloved... Read more

Humans are arguably the most intelligent beings on the planet (the fact that we can act in spectacularly unintelligent ways at times notwithstanding). We have been and continue to be devoted to “outsmarting” diseases. And yet we find it challenging. The reason is not in serious dispute. It is evolution. Were it not for the adaptation of viruses and bacteria to changes in their environment, including changes in the form of medicines we develop to try to eradicate them, we... Read more

I poked around YouTube for videos featuring scholars and historians talking about the historical Jesus, and the following are two of the more interesting/useful ones I came across: Marcus Borg talking about the color-coded ranking system used by the Jesus Seminar, and highlighting which elements of both the popular and dominant scholarly view of Jesus “drop out” as a result of being ranked black. He also helpfully clarifies that gray indicates uncertainty rather than unlikelihood – often it indicated the... Read more

In addition to teaching my Historical Jesus class for the first time this semester, I also plan to work on the course description for the new course on religion and science fiction that I’ll be teaching in the Spring. The gist of it will be something along the following lines: This course will explore and critically reflect on religious themes, motifs, concepts and allusions in science fiction (including television and film as well as classic and more recent literature). Philosophical... Read more