The online devotional reflection by John Edgerton that the above quote is taken also includes the statement that provides the title of this post: “I believe Bible study is the best medicine for fundamentalism.” Click through to read it. Read more
The online devotional reflection by John Edgerton that the above quote is taken also includes the statement that provides the title of this post: “I believe Bible study is the best medicine for fundamentalism.” Click through to read it. Read more
Matthew Ferguson drew my attention to this discussion he had with Craig Evans about the date of the Gospels. Here’s the description from YouTube: This radio debate between New Testament scholar Dr. Craig Evans of Houston Baptist University and soon-to-be Classics Ph.D Matthew Ferguson looks at when the Gospels were written and why it matters. Were the synoptics written within the lifetime of eyewitnesses? Or long after, combining some elements of history with some elements of myth? Do the Gospels... Read more
I found myself reflecting recently on the ways we count “attendance” in relation to church congregations. Why do we focus on Sunday morning worship services, and not how many come to the community breakfast, or other things. And indeed, what is the meaning of the Sunday morning service, which was designed to convey information in a context in which the normal way for information to flow was very different from today. This led to a discussion with the area minister... Read more
Yesterday’s Bizarro comic highlighted the absurdity of the Noah’s ark story when taken literally. One has to either have the Earth so completely changed and reshaped that it would involve a greater cataclysm than anything the Bible explicitly states or the geological record bears witness to, or one has to imagine other people in other parts of the world sending messages to Noah asking him to pick up species from their part of the world (but not themselves as humans),... Read more
The quote comes from “The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child.” It can be found in The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll. For more about Ingesoll, see Bruce Gerencser’s recent post. Read more
This sample of how a role playing game works made me laugh. Does anyone know what book it is from? Read more
The quote comes from a post by R. L. Stollar, focused on the question of whether it is possible to debate a fundamentalist productively, but also what leads fundamentalists to want to engage in those unproductive debates in the first place. Here’s the immediate context of the quote in the meme image: At the root of these various fundamentalism is, I believe, a mindset that values ideology over people. Fundamentalism is an obsession with getting ideology right, rather than a dedication... Read more
The American Academy of Religion’s Traditions of Eastern Late Antiquity program unit, and the Society of Biblical Literature Aramaic program unit and Religious World in Late Antiquity Section, are co-sponsoring a session on the Aramaic and Mandaic magical bowls. A session is being planned on the Aramaic magic bowls. Given the interdisciplinary sponsorship, we propose that the session focus on the intersection of diverse perspectives on these artifacts: Aramaic Magic Bowls: Language, Ritual, and Context. How can language experts help... Read more
My Sunday school class, at the request of one participant, recently ended up discussing first heaven and then hell. I started us off by noting that, while “heaven” (in the sense of the sky) is there from the very first verse of the Bible, the same cannot be said for “hell” (see the recent online article highlighting the infrequency of references to anything that could be so translated). I was delighted to have the opportunity to raise problems that ought... Read more
I had a hard time even figuring out what to call this post. My friend and colleague Brent Hege gave a wonderful lunchtime talk today about religious freedom, during which he mentioned the difficulties that face attempts to define religion, and the ways in which the definition of religion assumed in discussion of such matters as separation of church and state are the result of particular historical developments in our thinking about religion, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation and the... Read more
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