I wonder how long it will be before some bloggers try to adopt a model that has worked well for certain radio stations, and begin blogging only Christmas-related material from as soon as Thanksgiving is over until December 26th. It might be an interesting approach. But in an online parallel to what happens with the radio stations, perhaps the result will be that people will merely leave those blogs on in the background while they do their online shopping. Read more

HT Nik at Nite Read more

Thanks to Matt Montonini for pointing out that Brian Abasciano’s doctoral dissertation from the University of Aberdeen “Paul’s Use of the OT in Romans 9.1-9” is available online. The book resulting from the dissertation was published by T&T; Clark and apparently a less expensive edition is due out in 2011. Read more

Drew Tatusko has posted a retrospective on Pat Robertson’s predictions for 2010. (Most other bloggers have been focusing on another topic Pat Robertson addressed more recently). Read more

Larry Hurtado shared a link today to a post by Alan Segal, which was part of a conversation that took place in 2005. I may or may not have seen it at that time, but at the very least I can say that it had definitely slipped my mind. And so I was grateful to have my attention drawn to it. The post explains why New Testament scholars set themselves such very hard tests like meeting the criterion of embarrassment,... Read more

Brad Matthies has posted on OAIster, a WorldCat database of open access journals and other publications, using my colleague Chad Bauman as an example of the way digital open access publishing affects the prominence of scholars’ research in search engine results and other relevant contexts. In practice, not everything that comes up as a result turns out to be freely accessible via the internet. And this relates to a second post of Brad’s today, on the subject of Open Access. Read more

Ken Schenck has shared some arguments for why the Book of Acts should be regarded as having been written after AD 70, and why the author probably was aware of Paul’s death by the time he wrote. Read more

Dan McClellan has been posting a lot of interesting questions and thought-provoking material lately. The latest asks whether the dead were referred to as “gods” in ancient Israel, and if so what that might indicate. Take a look at his post, which discusses a couple of passages that refer to elohim in connection with sheol. Read more

Yet another intersection between religion and science fiction: Jeri Massi, whose blog “Blog on the Way” focuses on Christian fundamentalism and the victims of abuse in such churches, also writes Doctor Who fanfic! That her page dedicated to her stories is called “Always the Third Doctor” will tell you which was her favorite. Today on her blog she posted a link to a Christmas story she wrote, “Christmas with Friends.“ It will provide you with something to read while you... Read more

Over the past few days I have trying to make a point of posting to my blog short mentions of interesting links that, in the past, I might simply have shared in my Google Reader feed widget and/or on Facebook. This has resulted in an increased number of blog posts, as regularly readers of the blog are presumably aware, although if you usually see posts via Facebook, there may have been little or no noticeable difference. I’d like to hear... Read more