Patheos announced recently that it will be rolling out a new mobile-friendly version of its site. I know that readers of my blog have been frustrated with some of the technical issues. And so I would encourage you to try out the site today via your mobile device(s), and let me know if and when you notice improvements. I promise to convey any feedback you may have to the tech folks at Patheos. If you comment about improvements or issues,... Read more
The claim that the Bible is inerrant, and in particular that the manuscript tradition used by the King James translators was divinely preserved so as to avoid error, is implausible for a number of reasons. But there is one simple fact that is particularly relevant: There have been Bibles which contained typos. Of course, anyone who has studied the manuscript history of the Bible’s transmission will know that there have been copying errors. But that involves making mistakes when copying by hand.... Read more
Israel Today shared a video of Qumran caves, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered: The Progressive Christian Network of Victoria shared a video of Greg Jenks talking about the Bible. Ben Witherington shared a link to an interview he did about the James ossuary (click through to see it). There’s also a new book out on the role of James in the early church: Alan Saxby’s James, Brother of Jesus, and the Jerusalem Church: A Radical Exploration of Christian... Read more
The above words are from an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Non-Violence as Compliance,” which appeared in The Atlantic. They seemed to deserve the wider circulation that a meme image sometimes brings, and so I made the above. As the background, I used a photo of him from the Lavin Agency website. I would be interested to know what readers of this blog think about the use of violence – against property or against people. Is it ever justified? Did Jesus call his... Read more
The infographic below from the Huffington Post is an improvement over some of the others I’ve seen (one of which I blogged about last month), but still fails to break down religions other than Christianity into subcategories, thus painting those traditions with too broad a brush. The data comes from the recent survey undertaken by the Public Religion Research Institute. Read more
I have a sabbatical coming up in the Fall, and so I thought I would share this pie chart, which breaks down what is in store for me each day in the coming months… Read more
As you can see above, a friend of mine asked on Facebook whether anyone they know has a goat. As I said in my comment, that is the first time I have encountered a goat request on Facebook. What’s the oddest request you’ve encountered on social media? And how will the fact that one can ask for a goat by this means – and get one on short notice, apparently – change the way we live our lives? Read more
Several people have been blogging about a book that I mentioned when I read a draft of it about a year ago. The book is by Jeffrey Gibson, and the title is The Disciples’ Prayer: The Prayer Jesus Taught in Its Historical Setting. Jim Spinti offered some brief thoughts on the book, and Loren Rosson offers a fuller review of the book’s key arguments. Here’s the endorsement that I provided to the publisher: “One could be forgiven for thinking that, when it... Read more
The suggestion that the cosmos might have multiple creators, and/or one or more bungling ones, is voiced in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. This cartoon from SMBC updates the image to one that is particularly appropriate for the end of the semester. Do click through and push the red button for the final punchline. And I appreciated Christian Brady’s sharing of the cartoon, which led me to pay more attention to the “age of miracles” idea than I had when... Read more
I suggested once before that urban violence is our society’s Hunger Games. And so it doesn’t surprise me that Amandla Stenberg, who played the character Rue in the movie The Hunger Games, tweeted about this topic, and retweeted a tweet that made the comparison explicit. I had students writing about dystopian fiction as social commentary this semester. When students mentioned the Hunger Games series (as many did), they often talked about how unrealistic it is, and how different from the society... Read more
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