After discussing Simon Peter, Ben Witherington, in his book What Have They Done with Jesus? proceeds to deal with the information we have available on the Mary, the mother of Jesus. This continues with chapter 5. (Previous entry in this series is Search for the Historical Simon Peter – II.) I should make it clear…
I’ve watched with some interest the debates over Barack Obama’s rhetoric. He has been charged with using empty rhetoric instead of presenting actual solutions. I have a bit of a problem with this. Stump speeches generally are mostly fluff. They’re designed to encourage and excite the faithful. They’re supposed to be emotional. I haven’t seen…
I frequently recommend reading the story of the exodus through conquest as a kind of connected narrative, trying to learn from the stories. The problem I’ve discovered is that many people skip over the ceremonial and legal parts of the Bible and thus often miss important narrative points that are interleaved with those elements. Ultimately,…
Thomas Durst has a nice, short, devotional post drawn from Jeremiah 32:36-44, which he quotes from The Message. It’s titled Healing and Restoration.
Not too long ago I posted about the necessity for church politics. Today I was reading Frederick W. Danker’s commentary on 2 Corinthians, and I ran across a similar argument, based on 2 Corinthians. Let me quote it: Much of Paul’s success lay in his political acumen, with a flair for recognition of the potential…
. . . according to this MSNBC.com story. He had an exploratory campaign for about a month. Normally an exploratory campaign is designed to see if you ought to run. Now here’s what I want to know. What would he have had to discover to persuade him not to run?
Since I’ve made this journey myself, I’m always on the alert for other stories of similar journeys. It’s interesting that I’ve found many more such stories amongst those studying science. On the religion side, it’s generally those who studies nuts and bolts material (textual criticism, history, archeology, and so forth) who start to see holes…
I took a detour from working through 2 Corinthians with the Anchor Bible commentary and read Frederick W. Danker’s volume II Corinthians in the Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament series. This is a 214 page commentary, but has more content than you might expect because it doesn’t include the Biblical text along with the…
OK, readers, this is a strictly Christian type of argument. Is regeneration and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit the same thing? Since I haven’t link to him in so long, some may think I no longer read Adrian Warnock’s blog, but that is quite incorrect. I still subscribe to his RSS feed, but he’s…
According to the Bradenton Herald, Paul Gross used the word “dishonest” in reference to the compromise language. Personally I prefer “silly” or “inane.” The changes didn’t change the meaning.