There Is No Bible

Last updated on: February 17, 2021 at 2:30 pm By James F. McGrath

I make the point regularly that there is no such thing as “the Bible.” The Jewish Bible and Protestant Old Testament may contain the same books, but they are categorized differently, translated differently, and approached through different frames of reference. Catholic and Orthodox Bibles are different from Protestant ones, and once again the assumptions of readers tend to be too. There are, at best, many Bibles, and the use of the singular as though it denoted a universally agreed upon... Read more

A Piece of the Biblical Action

Last updated on: February 17, 2021 at 2:29 pm By James F. McGrath

I’ve been rewatching the original series of Star Trek and as always have been taking notes on points I might return to in blog posts or other contexts, in particular things related to religion. My memories of the episode “A Piece of the Action” were largely the existence of a society patterned on Chicago’s mob wars in the 1920s. I had, however, not remembered how that society came to have those characteristics. There is a direct relevance to religion, and... Read more

Source Criticism: When the Bible Doesn’t Make Sense

Last updated on: February 16, 2021 at 6:56 pm By James F. McGrath

After I shared Jana Riess’ great article about Kristin Swenson’s recent book A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible, it became clear to me that I don’t always talk with my family or my Sunday school class about things that I now take for granted and that seem obvious to me, common knowledge about the Bible. Or if I have mentioned them, I may have done so once, in passing, and not provided an opportunity to explore them... Read more

News of the World: Understanding the Roots of American Culture

Last updated on: February 15, 2021 at 10:12 pm By James F. McGrath

I just watched the movie News of the World starring Tom Hanks. It was comments and thoughts about the film from my wife, an American citizen who spent most of her life in Romania, that helped me to realize how much the history of colonization, settlement, and the “Wild West” is key to understanding the culture of the United States right down to today. Even those of us whose European ancestors came well after that time, we joined ourselves to... Read more

Refugees from Israel

Last updated on: February 14, 2021 at 5:53 pm By James F. McGrath

There is a modern refugee issue related to modern-day Israel. But here I want to talk about ancient refugees. This news article that Jim Davila drew attention to a few years ago argued that certain archaeological evidence showed how refugees from the fallen Northern Kingdom of Israel found a haven in Judah. Biblical scholars could already tell that was the case from the fact that the oracles of Hosea, delivered in the Kingdom of Israel just before the Assyrians brought... Read more

America’s Greatness is Gone for Good

Last updated on: February 13, 2021 at 6:11 pm By James F. McGrath

It as obvious to many of us that the rhetoric of making America “great again” presumes the existence of a golden age in the past, and it isn’t at all obvious when that was if one is honest and has the wellbeing of everyone in mind. But if we ask when the supporters of Trump thought we were great, it was obviously when slaves made white plantation owners great, when segregation kept white people elevated above others in policies that... Read more

Impeaching Elisha

Last updated on: February 12, 2021 at 7:57 pm By James F. McGrath

There are a great many false prophets around in our time, so many that the phenomenon has come to the attention of major national news outlets. But I want to focus on a figure who is pretty much universally agreed to be a true prophet, namely Elisha, the disciple of Elijah. I want to discuss whether his words would have constituted an impeachable offense. For those who may have missed it, the lawyers defending former president Donald Trump have been... Read more

Music, the Bible, and Grief

Last updated on: February 11, 2021 at 2:32 pm By James F. McGrath

I wish I could find a recording of Amy Beach’s work “Jephthah’s Daughter.” That story is one of the many challenging and tragic ones in the Bible, and I would very much like to hear Beach’s treatment of it. Female readers of stories like this one often immediately notice the patriarchal cultural values embedded in it in ways that male readers may not. I would thus like to hear what female composers do when exploring the story. Clarissa Aaron has... Read more

Evolution Weekend Approaches!

Last updated on: February 10, 2021 at 9:13 pm By James F. McGrath

Evolution weekend and Darwin Day are almost here. If you don’t already follow the Clergy Letter Project you should, and subscribe to their newsletter. They recently shared, among other things, Barbara Hamm’s hymn, “The Vast Expanse of Time and Space,” including not only the sheet music for that but also videos with songs and information relevant to the intersection of religion and science. The Butler University campus ministry Grace Unlimited shared Genesis 1: An Ongoing Dialogue. Having felt that the topic of... Read more

What Jesus Learned from Women Cover

Last updated on: February 8, 2021 at 8:15 pm By James F. McGrath

I am excited to share some updates about my book What Jesus Learned from Women, which should be out next month. It is now available for pre-order via the publisher’s website. They only just listed it and so a lot of information is still not there, including the cover art. Fortunately I have had a chance to see that and can share it here. I’ve blogged about how excited the chance to commission custom artwork for the cover art made me,... Read more