Tony Burke is blogging his way through The Heresy of Orthodoxy by Kostenberger and Kruger. Today in part 3, he draws attention to some problematic aspects of the book’s approach. It sounds like the sort of book that may (and perhaps should?) simply be dismissed or ignored by mainstream scholars, since its authors choose to attempt to redefine historical study rather than practice it. A book which apparently says things like “Assuming the historical accuracy of Luke’s account…” (p. 75) and... Read more

Many thanks to Jim Getz for drawing attention to Project Information Literacy, and in particular a study they did on the way students use online sources of information. The report, available online as a pdf, is entitled “Truth Be Told: How College Students Evaluate and Use Information in the Digital Age.” The site includes a number of videos. Read more

Christians have historically believed that Jesus’ burial was temporary – but that is not what this post is about. A historical/archaeological question is whether Jesus’ burial was supposed to be temporary – the tomb in which he was placed being a burial place for criminals, in which bodies would be placed, allowed to decompose, and then after a year the bones would be transferred to an ossuary and moved to a family tomb. In a follow-up to his other recent article... Read more

The Stoa Consortium shares evidence that open access scholarship gets cited more frequently in other scholarly literature – yet one more argument in its favor. The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World discusses the relationship between blogging, peer review, and scholarly research and publication, with a concrete example of material that was blogged, presented, and published. There has been some discussion of the making available online of vodcasts of lectures and classes. One issue that needs more attention is that of classes... Read more

At BioLogos, Evangelical biologist Dennis Vennema continues to present evidence for common ancestry. At Jesus Creed, the series on the implications of modern science (including but not limited to evolution) for Christian theology continues. At Religion Dispatches, Lauri Lebo reports on the attack on science textbooks in Louisiana. Read more

Let me begin by saying once again how much I appreciate Larry Hurtado taking the time to review my book The Only True God and for sharing his review on his blog. I thought it would be worth making just a few points in response, in the hope that I can clarify my own viewpoint, and also hopefully stimulate further conversation on this subject that is of interest to so many, the relationship of early Christianity to Judaism as far... Read more

Panda’s Thumb offers scientific evidence against geocentrism, with cool astronomy pictures that illustrate the point. And John Loftus shared a couple of videos about young-earth creationism, and why gravity-denial is a necessary corollary of it. Many will say that the heart of the matter is whether God lied to humanity in the Bible. But that’s not the case at all. It is much easier to suggest that God accommodated the message in the Bible to what people could understand when... Read more

A petition has been created to lobby for the Mandaeans still suffering persecution in Iraq and elsewhere to be allowed to emigrate to the United States as refugees. Please take the time to sign it, and to spread the word! var Care2P_Parameters=[“http://www.thepetitionsite.com/xml/petitions/812/718/974/feed.rss”, “small”, “single”, “1007”, “0”, “#7cbb42”, “#eb6924”, “#c739e”]; Read more

This post isn’t about messages supposedly hidden in the Bible in “Bible code” fashion. But there is something in Scripture that is not strictly speaking hidden, and yet many of us fail to see it, at least initially. What I’m referring to is this: In the Hebrew Bible, there seems to be very little concern that people say “the right things” about or to God. Just a few passages that spring to mind in connection with this theme are Psalm 44:23,... Read more