Marks of the Jesus Message

This passage is from the lectionary selection for February 5, 2006, Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany.

29And immediately as he came out of the synagogue he went into Simon’s house. 30Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. 31And coming near he raised her up, taking [...]

Wesley Elsberry Profile

There’s an excellent profile on Wesley Elsberry on the Daily Kos who is both a Christian (United Methodist) and a scientist who accepts the theory of evolution. He works for the National Center for Science Education. This article makes a number of excellent points regarding the need for quality science education.

I recommend this [...]

Was the Bible Written to Me?

In some recent discussions, mostly related to my Seventh-day Adventist background (for those who may not know, I’m now a member of a United Methodist congregation but was raised SDA), I have encountered quite a number of questions regarding who various elements of scripture are for. For example, many Christians will say that the [...]

Choosing a Pew Bible

Sometimes choosing a pew Bible is a kind of afterthought. I grew up in churches that didn’t even have pew Bibles. It was expected that all the church members would have their own and would bring them to church. But for many churches the pew Bible can have a major impact both on worship [...]

Divine Wisdom and Discernment

I’m back to my discussion of inspiration, dealing with the issue of how one determines whether someone can speak for God. In this entry I’m going to look at the last two items on my list, divine widom, and the gift of discernment, which are closely related.

As a preliminary, let me comment that [...]

Attitude of Repentance

Note: I wrote the following two days ago for my wife’s devotional list. I thought it might be of interest to the blog.

10And God saw their actions, that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that he said he would do to them, and he didn’t do it. [...]

Finding an Authoritative Translation – Supplement A

In my entry Finding an Authoritative Translation I talked about ways in which a person who is not familiar with the source languages can nonetheless check for translation problems and at least be forewarned as to where translation may become an issue in Bible study. I indicated I was going to go back to [...]

Revision and Translation

In my book What’s in a Version? and in my Bible Translation Selection Tool I do not deal much with the question of whether a translation is a revision or not, except when the translation is not taken from the original languages. In this entry, I’m going to look at a couple of revision [...]

Finding an Authoritative Translation

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm things eventually boil down to “all the animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

I think I can apply this to Bible translations as well as to animals, especially when one is looking for an authoritative translation. The fact is that no translation perfectly reflects [...]

Martin Luther King Day: Man, Nation, and Myth

I missed posting yesterday because I was suffering from the flu. In fact, I’m not all that energetic today either, but I did want to post something about Martin Luther King day.

Many people seem not to have become comfortable with Martin Luther King day as a holiday. This was brought home to me [...]