“Choose your enemies carefully, ’cause they will define youMake them interesting ’cause in some ways they will mind youThey’re not there in the beginning but when your story endsGonna last with you longer than your friends” — “Cedars of Lebanon“, from the U2 album No Line On The Horizon. Lyrics by Bono. Read more

Here’s the latest installment of Lost Untangled, entertaining as always. http://widgets.abc.go.com/o/48bda4baaf82f1d1/49d426845a7ae4fa/48bda4baaf82f1d1/e58a2f64/-cpid/af60537961e61d01 Perhaps the most interesting clue in tonight’s episode [Spoiler Alert] was the reference to Charles and Ellie still being on the island at this stage, among the Others in a leadership position, although Richard Alpert says he doesn’t answer to them. I had always assumed that Charles Widmore was behind the Dharma Initative all along, and that is still possible, although perhaps it is more likely that his family... Read more

This specialist academic bookseller’s April Fools’ Day sale is always entertaining for students of the Bible and/or the Ancient Near East. This year is no exception. Read more

The latest Biblical Studies Carnival is up at James Gregory’s blog. This is not a joke! The next one will be… HERE, at Exploring Our Matrix! That’s not a joke either! Read more

The Top 50 Biblioblogs list for this past month has been posted. I came in at number 3 this time. Read more

It was some years ago that I learned of research pointing to some remnant of the lost tribes of Israel having settled in the territory of what is now Switzerland. The evidence is both linguistic and cultural. Having left a land flowing with milk and honey, how would they maintain these key components of their traditional diet in their new home? Clearly one option would be to add both ingredients to chocolate. Such a rich recipe would indeed be “good... Read more

Historically, Biblical scholarship entrails note only the stud of periscopes in an attempt to make sense of Pacific passages, butt also the publication of woks of erudition in print formal, in boots printed on pauper and made available through perverts of wars which include suck volumes. In the contemporary age, however, the spell-checking technology could potentially spell (if you wall excuse the punt) the down fall of traditional pub licking. By auto-making the process where by not only the spelling... Read more

In his latest book, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them), Bart Ehrman seeks to introduce a wider audience to important aspects of the New Testament. The contradictions, tensions and diversity of viewpoints in the Bible which Ehrman highlights, and the historical-critical approach he outlines, are common knowledge to Biblical scholars, as well as to anyone who had studied in a mainline seminary in the past half century or so. Yet... Read more

The latest LOST news introduces the actor who will be playing Jacob, the mysterious figure behind the Others and one of the biggest unanswered questions. Will he turn out to be one of the immortal original inhabitants of the island? A time traveller? If the latter, is he from the past, or the future? Is he the ancestor or the descendant of individuals we’ve already met? Click through if you don’t mind spoilers of what’s to come. Read more

Today in my Sunday school class I emphasized that those who use the material in Romans 1 about homosexuality as a weapon with which to condemn and “clobber” others have clearly made the error of stopping reading at the end of chapter 1 – which, like all the chapter and verse divisions in the New Testament, was not in the letter Paul wrote. If we continue reading, we discover that Paul engaged in a stereotypical Jewish condemnation of Gentiles (compare... Read more