When I teach Sunday School classes, as I often do, there is nothing more likely to lull people to sleep than a discussion of hermeneutics. I get a great deal of attention talking about history. People are very interested as I explore some different interpretations of a particular Biblical passage and where and when those…
Over on my company blog I indicated that these rules were generally common sense, as in if you make money off of something you should disclose the fact that you do. Of course, you can’t count on the government to use common sense even in implementing common sense. Thus somehow if print news organizations get…
John Hobbins has produced an excellent post on exegesis, The unacceptable limits of traditional exegesis, in which he calls us to keep the various senses of the text together, or perhaps in tension. At some time I would like to extend this discussion to the use of the various disciplines we normally bundle under the…
I’ve really been wanting to write something about this for some time, but I haven’t, and don’t, have time to do it justice. But I saw a couple of other posts that begin to address some of the issues. My deep concern is with ideas such as zero tolerance polices, the great push to make…
John Hobbins has already commented on this, and I agree with what he had to say. But my attention was called back to the issue from a Christian Post item in my reader account this morning titled First verse in Bible is mistranslation, say scholar. There are just so many things wrong with that headline,…
This is just a quick early reaction, and my reaction is that it is too early to judge President Obama’s impact on world peace. Yet he has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for which nominations were closed two weeks after he took office. I want to be clear that what I like most about…
While I am an advocate of as open of discussion as possible, I dislike the use of the word “censorship” for the actions of private individuals. There are many television shows, for example, that I either dislike or even think are simply bad. I not only don’t watch them, but I will also tell others…
In How has Literal Interpretation Changed, Erik at Fundamentally Changed discusses the ways in which we must reinterpret literal interpretation. I don’t generally like the very idea that interpretation should be literal, but Erik makes some excellent suggestions. One of the questions I ask in When People Speak for God is just how Abraham knew…
… on the Energion.com eZine, which is currently in development. But I’m trying to bring a few people over there, so a copy of Preserving Democracy will be given to a randomly selected commenter who writes a relevant comment. In mid-October I will be changing the topic to science education, and offering a $10 B&N…
There has been a good deal of discussion of this around the blogosphere, related to graduate school and job applications as well. Nels P. Highberg provides an interesting example at ProfHacker. (HT: Exploring Our Matrix)