I’m starting a short (I hope) series on interpreting the Bible. This is in response to a series of posts I read recently. The first two were from EvolutionBlog, OEC vs. YEC and The “Terrible Texts” of the Bible. I then encountered A question for Christians on Positive Liberty, which discusses some poor (in the…
In chapter six of his book God’s Problem, Ehrman tackles the book of Job. (My notes on the book as a whole are here.) He describes the book as coming from two sources, one containing the narrative portions, and one containing the poetic dialogues. This view is not that exceptional, though one should also consider…
Over the last few days there have been a flurry of posts at Language Log that could be related to Biblical criticism, though that is not the intent of their authors. What they are actually discussing is authorship identification and then spin spotting, with an interesting twist at the end. Here are some key posts…
I have two books on my “to be read” shelf that I also intend to blog through. Since I just completed Random Designer, by Dr. Richard Colling, and I have Francis Collins, The Language of God which also deals with evolution, I decided to take Ben Witherington III, What Have They Done with Jesus? next….
One of my more esoteric goals in life is to complete a study of every book of the Bible form the original languages working with a commentary that takes critical issues into account. I have read the Bible through in its original languages. This is a different type of study. I will generally read other…
I encountered a few posts related to these to words, to which I’d like to call your attention. First, via Higgaion I navigated to this post about taking things on faith. The author, Dr. James F. McGrath, makes some excellent points on just what faith means from a Biblical perspective. One thing I would emphasize…
. . . at Ancient Hebrew Poetry. I don’t have a post in there this time, but that’s not a complaint–I can’t think of what I’d nominate in this case. I will certainly get some blogging fodder from reading the posts. There are certainly a substantial number of excellent biblioblogs available. Speaking of which, John…
Regular readers of this blog (that imaginary group every blogger hopes he has!) will know that I am not a fan of the [tag]ESV[/tag]. More precisely, I’m not a fan of the hype that surrounds it in certain circles. It’s not a bad translation in my view–it’s just not very special. Thus I was not…
Genesis 10 is one of those chapters that Bible students often try to avoid, because it is filled with names that are difficult to pronounce, and it’s hard for our modern ears to hear it as anything other than an interruption. But to the redactor of Genesis, these genealogies were serious business. Genesis 5 provides…
I somehow got the idea that the inerrancy series to which I linked yesterday was in five parts. A comment from the author let me know that I was wrong on that point, and how I got the idea I do not know, consider that the statement “*Part 6 will conclude with reflections on why…
