Bob Cargill has posted a wonderful analogy between reception history of the Bible and Star Wars. He makes great points, such as The ‘correct’ interpretation of a myth does not necessarily confirm the historicity of the myth. and Arguing over the best way to interpret a story does not prove the story historical, factual, or true…The debate about a text’s interpretation has absolutely no bearing upon whether the claim is, in fact, factual. This is a crucial point – and the analogy is... Read more
In my freshmen seminar class “Faith, Doubt, and Reason,” we discussed the problem of evil, with the classic statement that (1) divine omnipotence, (2) perfect divine goodness/justice, and (3) the reality of evil are incompatible. Before exploring other possibilities which try to preserve all three, I asked students which they would remove if they had to give up one of the three in order to resolve the problem. They all chose “3” and I must admit that I was surprised.... Read more
Leah Libresco has a post about the nature of blasphemy, in which she shared this image, which I also found shared today on the Atheist Revolution blog : In her post, Libresco asks whether it is possible to commit blasphemy if you are not first convinced of the holiness of that which you then in insult. So, for instance, if you do not embrace the Dark Side of the Force, could you find the above photo blasphemous for its depiction of... Read more
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The latest Biblical Studies Carnival is up at the blog SansBlogue. Many thanks to Tim Bulkeley for putting together such a diverse and interesting carnival! Read more
Steven Moffatt promised a moving and fitting farewell to Rory and Amy. I think he pulled it off in the end, although in many ways, the episode faces the problem that “The Caves of Androzani” faces: we knew when watching it that the Doctor would regenerate, and there were so many perilous moments that at the end, the feeling was more satisfaction of curiosity (“Oh, so that's what gets him”) rather than tragic surprise (“Oh my gosh, the Doctor regenerated!”).... Read more
A friend shared this cartoon from the Answers in Genesis web site on Facebook: On the one hand, I don’t find the notion of waiting two millennia to pee funny. On the other hand, I find the idea of Noah’s flood being before the ice age hilarious – but I suspect that the maker of the cartoon didn’t intend that to be the joke. Does this mean that, since young-earth creationism is itself laughable, none of their attempts at humor will... Read more
I am struck by the prayerful pose of Amy and Rory in this poster for tonight’s episode of Doctor Who, “The Angels Take Manhattan”: As we fans of the show brace ourselves for tonight’s episode, feel free to discuss what you expect might happen, what you fear will happen, what you will be sorry if it never happened, and what you will miss most as things change when Doctor Who returns at Christmas, if not sooner. Read more
Discussions continue in the blogosphere about the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. The most important thing to work out, if we can, is the date of its composition – dating the text is important both in terms of figuring out whether the text is authentic, but also, if authentic, what period in history it tells us about. The text seems to depend directly on the Gospel of Thomas in Coptic, and thus is unlikely to be a Coptic translation of an... Read more
This is…a plea that we follow Augustine and divest ourselves of the notion that interpreting a text literally means taking it as an historically accurate account of things that happened in time and space. If the text isn’t an historical narrative, then treating it as an historical narrative is not properly a literal interpretation. — Chris Heard, “Interpreting Genesis 1 ‘literally'” on the blog Higgaion Read more
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