I’ll be traveling to Toronto today to the York Christian Apocrypha Symposium. I will try to blog about the conference as it happens, if I can, but I don’t yet know what wi-fi access will be like. Those on Twitter can follow tweets about the conference via the hashtag #YCAS2015 Read more
As I sought feedback on the Swahili lyrics of Baba Yetu recently, one of the most crucial kinds of feedback I received was of the sort that said “X rather than Y sounds more natural to a native speaker.” As Bill Mounce pointed out in a recent blog post, this is the kind of instinctive knowledge that only comes with great proficiency in a language. And it is why people who look up words in Strong’s Concordance and pretend to... Read more
A key step is to create division between your opponent’s bishops over same-sex marriage. Watch the video above for other creative moves… Read more
I’ve blogged in the past about sayings which were attributed to various figures – Mother Teresa and Reinhold Niebuhr – while others have addressed Albert Einstein and Josh Groban. One thought that struck me is that we tend to have saying gravitate from less famous people to more famous ones, and new sayings fabricated and attributed to famous individuals. I found myself wondering whether we ever have sayings misattributed to non-historical figures. And if not, does that have any bearing on... Read more
Andrew Bernhard has shared his analysis of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, showing the likelihood that the forger used Mike Grondin’s online interlinear of the Gospel of Thomas, on both Mark Goodacre’s and Bart Ehrman’s blogs. What struck me most was his reference to there appearing to be a consensus on the matter among scholars. There have been two journal issues dedicated to the subject, but most of the discussion has taken place in the blogosphere. And so this seems... Read more
A commenter on this blog mentioned how useful it would be if scholars in Classics, ancient Jewish history, or Roman history were to read and give their impressions of Richard Carrier’s book, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. The truth is that, just as I am perhaps going to read mainstream scholarship in fields other than mine but related to mine, on which I thus need to keep up to date, but am not... Read more
Presumably there is a logical explanation for this, although it is one that is often overlooked by religious believers. The Biblical authors didn’t think of God as omnipotent. They had eliminated other gods by rolling them all into one. But God was still one who acted through flood and storm, earthquake and lightning, plague and famine. The development of the idea of God as one who can simply strike everyone dead still lay in the future. But do you agree that,... Read more
Rev. Frank Schaefer has drawn to my attention that a movie is being made about his experience. Some of you may recall when Schaeffer faced censure by his denomination for officiating at his own son’s same-sex wedding. The movie will be called An Act of Love. If you are interested in supporting the project, there is an opportunity to do so via IndieGoGo. If you give enough, you can even be listed in the credits! Read more
When I first posted the cartoon above by Tim “Spike” Davis, it was accompanied by a screenshot of someone arguing that, since the Bible refers to people reasoning with their hearts in the Bible, the heart must contain a tiny brain. I was subsequently informed that the individual who expressed this view had experienced a severe brain trauma when they were attacked, and ought not to be a target of ridicule. I agree, and thus removed the screenshot, which had come... Read more
Doctor Who returned to out TV screens this evening, and it was as full as ever of the creative mind-blowing stuff that has characterized the Moffatt era. While that era has been characterized with much that has been silly and frustrating – and this episode is no exception – it has typically made up for that by doing very creative things that draw impressively on Doctor Who’s past while managing to nonetheless be fresh and at times thrilling – and... Read more
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