I am extremely grateful to IVP for sending me a review copy of Open Hearts in Bethlehem: A Christmas Drama. Ever since I read his Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke, I have had an enormous appreciation for Kenneth Bailey’s scholarship on the cultural background to the New Testament. And his most famous contribution is probably his work on the cultural background to Luke’s infancy story. That work is summarized and... Read more
Tomorrow in my class on religion and science fiction, we’ll be talking about non-theistic religion depicted in science fiction, in movies like Star Wars and Avatar. Today Religion Nerd brought two links to my attention. One is a Fox News interview about Jediism. The second is Benjamin Svetkey’s article “Church of the Jedi” about spending time with a group of practicing Jedi. Here’s a quote: “No, we don’t worship Yoda,” says Tennessee-born Ally Thompson, a pretty, chatty 28-year-old Padawan (and... Read more
I just learned that New Testament scholar Jerome Murphy-O’Connor has passed away. He was a remarkably insightful scholar, capable of being very traditional and/or very creative in trying to make the best possible sense of the evidence. Those who have traveled to the Holy Land will or should know his The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (which I quoted on the blog in the past). His consideration of the topography of the setting of Jesus’ arrest continues to inspire and... Read more
Jeremy Myers shared this drawing a child made on a bulletin, which asked them to draw their favorite part of the mass: I consider it a real privilege to attend a church, Crooked Creek Baptist Church, where the only reason I am glad it is over is because by that point I am starting to get seriously hungry and am ready for some lunch. But I love teaching Sunday school, and being part of the music team, and consider both... Read more
“God is a God of truth, so the truth cannot unravel our faith if our faith is legitimate.” — Ken Schenck, in a blog post entitled “Paul, Athens, Evidence, Presuppositions” Read more
Today is the tenth bloggiversary of Exploring Our Matrix. Even before it moved to Blogger, there was a version hosted on my own academic web space. And that is still there! So you can click through and see what things looked like when this blog first began. Read more
There’s some of the same footage, but also some that we didn’t see in the first trailer the BBC released. And what’s here has me even more excited for this upcoming 50th anniversary episode. I particularly like an echo of words that we’ve heard more than once, but which we heard for the first time from the Second Doctor played by Patrick Troughton. I am delighted that, even if there may not be other Doctors besides two recent ones and... Read more
Yesterday I got to see the movie Ender’s Game. Although quite a bit had to be left out in order to make the story into a regular feature-length film, I felt that what was depicted was fairly true to the original, or at least in keeping with it. The visual effects were impressive and brought to life – and up to date – the things that the novel itself got us to imagine. There are spoilers in what follows. I... Read more
Young-earth creationism takes it upon itself to do something that none of the Biblical authors does. Even though there were lots of different views in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and later in Greece and Rome, about the processes involved in nature, we never see a Biblical author challenge any of those views. Not one. Sometimes, however, they do simply accept those views – such as when Paul treats the heart as the location of human thought rather than the brain, following... Read more
This comment was left on Facebook in response to a blog post of mine that someone shared: What’s especially ironic is the contrast between the young-earth creationist approaches to scripture, and to the natural world. They insist that the Bible must be literally true in every word, because God does not lie. And yet in denying the obvious evidence of the natural world, they claim that God created with the “appearance of age.” For what purpose? To deceive us, or... Read more
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