This came my way via Facebook, and I thought I would share it here. I appreciate the irony that, by speaking falsely about the Book of Revelation and other parts of the Bible, and consistently being wrong about the future, many of the end-times focused Christians do indeed seem to be fulfilling Biblical predictions about the Last Days… Read more
From PHD Comics Read more
Via Unvirtuous Abbey on Facebook. Read more
Christian music artist Don Francisco shared this striking reflection about the Bible on his Facebook page: “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Answer: They can rebuild them. The foundations have been destroyed, but not in the simplistic way most of Western Christianity imagines– it has taken centuries of knee-jerk defensiveness, blind acceptance and willful ignorance to reach our present state of ruin. We have become idolaters, and we worship the Bible. Calling it infallible and inerrant, we have exalted... Read more
Now that it has been published, I wonder whether anyone will do a comparison between The Unofficial Holy Bible for Minecrafters: A Children’s Guide to the Old and New Testament, and The Brick Bible – which is most definitely not aimed at children. How do they approach their storytelling? What is similar and different about them? How do the different aims of the authors lead to different results? Have any readers of this blog taken a look at both the Brick Testament series... Read more
I received word about the new book series below, and wanted to share it here, since it explicitly mentions the Mandaeans! New book series: Edinburgh University Press Non-Muslim contributions to Islamic civilisation Series editors: Professor Carole Hillenbrand and Dr Myriam Wissa Non-Muslim contributions to Islamic civilisation is a new edited series which deviates from the traditional focus on interfaith relations, and vividly brings to life the long, complex and varied contributions of non- Muslims in Islamic history and culture from... Read more
There’s been another interesting convergence of the blogosphere. Brandon Withrow shared his story of losing faith while teaching at seminary, and as a result departing from there. Christopher Skinner blogged about it, and asked what it is that leads to this experience being so common (UPDATE: see also his follow-up post about Jay Oord’s departure from Northwest Nazarene). Meanwhile, John Byron shared videos related to a book he has put together called I (Still) Believe: Leading Bible Scholars Share Their Stories... Read more
Two posts converged recently in my reader – one from David Hayward with the above cartoon, the other from Neil Carter about the last time he went to Sunday school, and the impact that the discussion of the Israelite extermination of the Canaanites had on him. In the latter post, Carter writes: Religious dogma can put you in the most uncomfortable positions of cognitive dissonance. Not too long ago I read a comment from a woman attempting to reconcile a high view... Read more
Via God of Evolution. It was shared in a post called “Two Memes About The Bible” and so you’ll need to click through it you want to find out what the second one was. The point is an important one. If you have not “interpreted” a text, then you have not made sense of the ink on the page, or the relationship between the words. When fundamentalists claim that they don’t interpret the text, they just read it, they suggest... Read more
This image from Pliny the In-Between is an attempt at humor, but raises an important question. Are all sacred texts the same, with the only differences being the sort that Mad Libs are famous for, but with a common structure beneath it all? My inclination is to say no. Even within the Bible, one will find different literature not merely filling in the blanks in different ways, but adopting an altogether different approach. On the other hand, as I reflect on the... Read more
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