As a result of my suggestion that Jim West be given serious competition for the status of top biblioblogger. Debate is raging on Facebook, and a new blog dedicated to the “Bibliobloggers Top 10” has been created, the idea presumably being that voting may be better than simply measuring traffic. I think the fairest way to settle this is simply to put it to a vote. Below is a completely unbiased poll, in the spirit of old style Soviet elections.... Read more

Today at church instead of Sunday school we had a cooked breakfast, and instead of the usual service we had a musical, The Christmas S.O.C.C.E.R. Team. The kids (and the self-proclaimed “geezers”) did an amazing job, and we had guest musicians including a soprano saxophone offering jazzy compliments to the singing and keyboard on “Sing We Now Of Christmas.” It included rap and bluegrass as well, and the young performers did a remarkable job and were incredibly professional, not to mention talented!... Read more

Jerry Coyne has a blog entry on the case of Martin Gaskell, an astronomer who did not get a job he applied for at the University of Kentucky, and is accusing the university of discrimination against his religious views. I want to share this because issues like this tend to get polarized, and so I really appreciate Coyne’s attempt to appreciate the relevance of nuance and the details of Gaskell’s views. Coyne is an atheist with low tolerance for those... Read more

Sci-fi fans know that scriptwriters for Star Trek: The Next Generation would often simply insert “tech” into the script in certain contexts and leave it to specialists to fill the space with technobabble. So, for instance, the scriptwriter would write Picard: Engineering, what seems to be the problem?Engineering: There’s a problem with the [TECH] and then pass it to someone else, who would turn it into Picard: Engineering, what seems to be the problem?Engineering: There’s a problem with the quantum... Read more

Jim West, irked by my call to biblioblogdom to rise up and challenge his streak as #1 biblioblogger, has posted a declaration of war. He’s so much fun to get riled up. I have a confession to make: I enjoy snow more because he posts complaints about it… Read more

Thanks to PositivelyKate for pointing out that the famous Charlie Brown Christmas special is available for free on Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/embed/DUDz6zKWGUzJwOd8Bt68fQ Read more

Here’s the Madrigal Choir of Bucharest singing another Romanian Christmas carol: The choir and Romanian Christmas music are not known as widely as they deserve to be outside of Romanian circles, and so hopefully no one will mind my sharing some of the recordings that are freely available online. Read more

In an e-mail I received recently, my attention was drawn to a review of my book The Only True God by Barbara Buzzard. The review is in essence an assessment of whether my book argues that a unitarian or trinitarian view of God should be a tenet for Christians today. Anyone who has read it will know that the book focuses on history, and sets aside questions of systematic theology. And I think it is the fact that I do not come out in support of oneness... Read more

Nijay Gupta has posted a review of Jimmy Dunn’s recent book on Christology and monotheism in the earliest church: Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?: The New Testament Evidence. Read more

I’ve long puzzled over Jim West’s unchallenged and seemingly unbeatable status as the number one biblioblogger. I mean, he managed to keep that status even when LOST was drawing to its finale…without blogging about LOST! How is that even possible?! I have suspected for some time that the secret is neither sheer popularity nor totally depraved and dilettantistly Zwinglified content, but the sheer frequency with which he posts. Combined with the number of people who subscribe to his blog feed,... Read more