… In the Tanakh, faith does not mean believing in spite of the evidence. It means trusting profoundly in a person, in this case the personal God who has reiterated His promise. (from The Jewish Study Bible: featuring The Jewish Publication Society TANAKH Translation, page 35.) I think that’s an excellent statement of what faith…
In my daily reading I encounter many different types of literature, each of which relates to the science I know in a different way. For example, I might read a newspaper, in which case the question is just what is an article about. Is it about art? I will look at it through one set…
I have written quite a bit about this topic on this blog, and am also doing a series related to it on my Threads blog, so I was glad to see another summary article (HT: Dr. Platypus). Most lay people are not well acquainted with critical theories about the Pentateuch, as they get the briefest…
Jason Rosenhouse has a post at EvolutionBlog responding to an essay by Owen Gingerich in Frye’s Is God a Creationist?. In that essay, Gingerich makes some interesting claims, suggesting some special advance information provided by God in the words of Genesis 1. Rosenhouse quite correctly comments and then asks: It’s people like Gingerich I don’t…
I started collecting links through clips on my bloglines account (yes, the blogroll is public), and one thing I’ve found is that I collect a remarkable number of links and I comment on only a few of them. There have been a number of good posts on Genesis recently, and I want to provide links…
I want to recommend another sermon from the senior pastor at our new church, Pensacola First UMC, Dr. Wesley Wachob. I should note that they usually post audio from a different service than the one I attend, and he doesn’t follow a precise written text, so there may be some difference. There were two reasons…
Pardon me for using “types” where “genre” would be more precise, but I frequently do so in teaching in order to avoid having to explain details. Further, “genre” doesn’t maintain the same meaning across all critical disciplines. In my previous post on the historicity of Genesis 1-11, I wrote as though one could establish a…
I think those of us who are not all that conservative, as in moderates and liberals, do everyone a disservice with the admonition, “Don’t take it so literally.” Unless, of course, we break down “not literally” a bit further. The word “literal” has gotten muddied in the public understanding, and is often taken to mean…
The story of the temptation and fall (Genesis 3:1-7) is one of the stories that sustains some complentarians and advocates of male leadership and authority. I use “myth” here in the partial technical sense of a story that explains and reinforces a cultural norm. In particular, people point out that Eve was taken in by…
A friend of mine e-mailed me a link to this post on Higgaion. It’s an interesting discussion, and Payne’s attitude is far from dead today. To the excellent article, I would add only a couple of questions. First, on what basis do people determine that Genesis 1 & 2 must be narrative history? I am…
