Johnny Walker responded to a response to a blog post of his about mythicism. If you are experiencing yet another day disrupted by the arctic weather, and are looking for something to read, there’s that. Of related interest: Mauro Pesce shared a book chapter on Academia.edu, “The Beginning of Historical Research on Jesus in the Modern Age.” James Charlesworth’s article on the Gospel of John and the historical Jesus is available for free through Brill Online. Jason DeBuhn has an... Read more
I recently experienced the irony of having someone quote 2 Peter in an attempt to show that there must have been a literal global flood. 2 Peter is the New Testament work which is the most universally acknowledged to be pseudepigraphal – in other words, an example of someone writing in the name of someone else, pretending to be that person. Even some relatively conservative scholars acknowledge this fact (although obviously not all – but even they have to admit to... Read more
Richard Beck shared in a blog post about his experience of preparing and preaching a sermon about hell. Here is the conclusion: And that was the turning point. Somewhere deep within me I knew, a feeling I’ve never let go of, that there was no way I could reconcile the bullet points of my sermon with my breaking heart. Going forward from that sermon I knew faced a choice. I was at a spiritual crossroad. On the one hand I... Read more
Via Pinterest. Read more
There’s a new blog, Scribalishess, written by a Hebrew Bible professor. Here is a quote from the end of the first substantive post, on reading Genesis literally: This is why biblical literalism (in the sense stated at the beginning) fails. It fails to read Genesis 1 literally. It fails to acknowledge the ancient writer’s worldview. It tries to cram modern rationalism and modern pseudo-science into an ancient text, and in so doing, it completely ignores the sacredness of the text—its poetic... Read more
This demotivational poster about young-earth creationist and Intelligent Design proponent quote-mining was inspired (or perhaps I should say demotivated?) by recent discussions here on the blog. Read more
Inspired by an image I saw on Facebook, but which had a typo in it and thus could not simply be reposted as it was. Here it is, however, to give credit where credit is due: Read more
Via Religion Memes on Facebook. See what happens if you always capitalize “He”? Read more
I confess I had not heard of Ola Gjeilo until the above video appeared on the blog Vaisamar. You can hear more by this contemporary composer on his website. Read more
Last Sunday in my Sunday school class, we reached the part of the Lord’s Prayer that asks for forgiveness of sins/debts/trespasses. Among the topics which came up, and to which we would have returned today if all church events had not been cancelled due to the severe winter weather, were the question of what “sin” should mean for Christians today, and whether we ought to obey commandments for which we cannot understand the rationale. Despite what you will sometimes hear,... Read more
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