Thursday, April 28, 2016

When the Rock Star met the Bible Scholar

Fascinating little video here

I was struck, one, by Peterson's focus on the task in hand (not being distracted from his deadline by a world famous rock star's invitation. Surely an indication of how he has acheived so much in life, focus!

And two, by Bono's comment about the dishonesty of Christian art and worship music. Ouch!

Enjoy, let me know what you think,


Monday, April 11, 2016

The Secret Life of Bible Societies

Scot McKnight offers a fascinating precis of John Fea's book The Bible Cause. It is not for nothing that many countries ban the distribution of Bibles, it is a highly political act, but not just the distribution, a Bible society's decisions about what to include or exclude can have far reaching effects. Forget the Illuminati we should all be worrying about the agendas of the Bible societies.

Easter, that famous pagan festival, not.

We've probably all heard how the celebration of Easter is based on the pre Christian celebration of the goddess Oester, from who we got oestrogen, and that Christians just tacked on some cute stories about Jesus to fit in with it. Of course that is a rather revisionist approach to the Christian explanation which is that Easter is the Christian celebration of the passover, fulfilled as it was by Jesus in his death and resurrection. And it also rather neatly ignores the fact that Christianity did not start celebrating Easter in Europe (where it could conceivably have been borrowing the fertility rites of a fictive German goddess) but in the Middle East. But never mind. Anyway if you are interested, I thought this was a helpful article on the subject. Enjoy!

Jesus treats the Syrophoenecian Woman as a Disciple

[This is an extract from my essay "Breaking Bread: The Power of Hospitality in the Gospel of Mark" which you can read in full and ...