James F. McGrath
Coptic text mentions Jesus' wife
The New York Times, the Harvard Gazette, The Huffington Post and other media outlets are breaking the news that Karen King, a scholar well known for her work on the phenomenon usually referred to as “Gnosticism,” has come into possession of and has been studying a Coptic papyrus fragment which is likely to be authentic, dates from around the 4th century, and has Jesus mention his wife.
Freedom of speech means freedom to insult, to criticize and to apologize
Many of the recent discussions about “free speech” in connection with the internet video about Islam called “Innocense of Muslims,” the violent reactions to it, and the apologies for it, seem to me...
Sooner or later, you have to choose between the Bible and inerrancy
A discussion I’ve been part of on Facebook illustrates something that I have said before on numerous occasions: ultimately, for those approaching the Bible as a sacred text, one has to choose betwe...
Don't let the fact that Paul's letters are now Christian scripture undermine their message and authority!
Paul, in his time, made a case for relaxing Scriptural stipulations about the need for anyone within Abraham's household to be circumcised in order to be part of the covenant (...
Mike Huckabee and America's sin problem
On his talk show, Mike Huckabee had the following to say about the shooting in Aurora, Colorado (that link goes to the Fox video; there are excerpts in print here):
Ultimately, We don’t have a crime problem or a gun problem – or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem. And since we ordered God out of our schools and communities, the military and public conversations, you know, we really shouldn’t act so surprised when all hell breaks loose.
Translating (away) the son of God
I’ve
been meaning for some time to come back to a topic that has been
garnering attention, the news that some Bible translations aimed at
predominantly Islamic contexts were not using the phrase “son of God,”
ever since I circulated an online article mentioning the news and was
met with expressions of concern because that particular piece posed the
matter in an inflammatory manner. (See Eddie Arthur’s blog post and longer pdf for more information.)
When
it comes to this issue of translation, I think that replacing “son of
God” with something else can be not only appropriate, but in keeping with
the spirit of the history of biblical translation.
If you can't have the Bible you'd love, love the Bible you have
I probably shouldn’t tamper with the wording of a song for the title of this post. Cee Lo Green has sparked
a lot of controversy with his New Year’s Eve rendition of John Lennon’s
“Imagine,” in which he changed “no religion, too” to “all religion’s
true.”
God's ironic hatred in Romans 9?
This past Sunday in my Sunday school class, we reached Romans 9....
Fringe view: The world of Jesus mythicism
Scholars disagree about how Jesus understood his life and mission. Countless labels have been applied to him. But everyone agrees that he existed, right?
Sooner or later it comes down to faith
In one of my classes, after discussing a number of difficulties and
issues related to the creation stories in Genesis, a student chimed in
...
Are atheists basically just like liberal believers?
The title of this post is intentionally provocative. It reverses the
similarity that some conservative religious believers (and some atheists) will at times use polemically, claiming that liberal believers are, for all practical purposes, no different from atheists.
The shadow Bible
A
commenter on a recent post mentioned the experience of highlighting
substantial parts of a work by Nietzsche while working on an essay.
Years later, he found the text and tried reading those parts he hadn’t
highlighted, to see what was in the sections that he didn’t find significant at the time. He then went on to ask if a similar experiment has ever been done with the Bible.
Is God bald?
I heard from a relative today a story about a younger child in our
family who asked her parent if God has hair. The parent had at least
...
Inerrancy of the Bible and Sarah Palin
The two possible meanings of the title of this post are intentional.
It seems to me that the same tactics that Christians who believe in the
Bible’s inerrancy use to deal with evidence to the contrary are the
tactics being used to defend the inerrancy of Sarah Palin (and other politicians – Palin just provides one obvious recent example).
Reading Romans as about Christians and not about Christians
As I have been going through Romans once again with my Sunday school
class, it has increasingly become evident to me how hard it is – and at
...
The sacred will be with you, always
I was really struck by a phrase in Chet Raymo's blog post "A Saturday Reprise." He begins by quoting Bilhah in The Red Tent
who responds to Zilpah's expression of fear at leaving a place where
customs and gods are known and moving to the unknown by saying "Every
place has its holy names, its trees and high places. There will be gods
where we go."
Legitimate ignorance vs. willful deception in biblical language
A recent comment suggested that language in the Bible such as
storehouses of snow, the dome over the earth, the earth's immovable
...