I admit, for a moment or two I suspected that Roland Boer might have created NT Wrong, Chris Tilling, and Tom Verenna merely with the aim of then proving none of them existed. But such an investigation, I soon realized, could only distract me from the important clue which has very recently been removed from NT Wrong’s blog (presumably at the same time at which he changed the photo to allow us a better glimpse of his chin). What led... Read more

That’s how I ranked in the quiz that Jim West directed us to. And that sounds about right. There seems to be an increase in willingness among at least some Evangelicals to be self-critical. And one good but challenging place to start, if you haven’t already, is by watching the video excerpt from God on Trial that Fred Anderson shared on his blog: Read more

That NT Wrong might be a fictional creation occurred to many. That the same might be true of Chris Tilling will have come as a shock, but in fact a simple search on Yahoo! for “Chrisendom” turns up evidence that it has existed for hundreds of years. But where does the trail to the real individual or individuals behind NT Wrong lead from there? Who would have a motive to create not one but at least two fictional blog personas?... Read more

“The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration.” — Heinz Pagels, Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time (Simon... Read more

In the case of identity of the mysterious NT Wrong, surely Chris Tilling is above suspicion, right? Perhaps when it comes to the question of earlier underlying sources. But when it comes to the identity of the ecclesiastical redactor, the one ultimately responsible for the final form of the NT Wrong blog (which, from the perspective of literary-critical blog-reading, is all that matters), then who else could be at once so ecclesiastical and so redactional as Chris Tilling? The name... Read more

Some have suggested that NT Wrong may be multiple people. He has been identified as a straight white male, and as a black lesbian woman. She has been identified as a scholar of Hebrew Bible, of the New Testament, of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or of Monty Python. Since this puzzle relates to a biblioblog, we should bring the most powerful tools that Biblical studies can offer to bear on the question. When we do so, the solution to the... Read more

J. C. Baker has posted twice, on the identity of NT Wrong and more proof that Mark Goodacre is NT Wrong. A remark made in the context of his posts suggests J. C. is deeply pained by his failure to make the Top 50 Bibliobloggers’ list. This leads us to suspect that in fact…J. C. is NT Wrong, and the whole thing was a ploy to achieve the status of legend, creating a fictional persona and then unmasking him as... Read more

But (as a detective in an Agatha Christie finale might say, having led you to believe that they had identified the murderer by providing motive and opportunity), it turns out that while ETS was on, Mark Goodacre was wandering Boston wearing a cricketing outfit with a piece of celery pinned to the lapel, looking for Peter Davison. (Presumably you’ve also seen the video on YouTube of what happened when he was at the Cheers bar). So we turn to our... Read more

I have several theories about the identity of NT Wrong. All of them are bunk. I will post them anyway. Be that as it may, in the course of my extensive investigations (= reading NT Wrong’s blog posts from time to time), I have uncovered a few clues that may help us deduce the true identity of this anonymous biblioblogger-bishop. Clue #1: NT Wrong is no younger than in his 30s. This can be deduced from the fact that he... Read more

The producers of LOST have released three new video clips: two focusing on actresses and their characters, one with a sneak peak of the first episode from the coming season. You definitely want to take a look at this! In the clip, lawyers turn up at Kate’s door with a court order asking her to provide a blood sample from her and her son. They are not at liberty to divulge the identity of their client. Kate refuses, and once... Read more