“This is the only life that we know we get: use it in the best way you know how. Don’t wait around for a bonus life that may never come.”
-@Paulogia0
- @Paulogia0 published a video entitled “Why I am Not a Christian” over at his YouTube channel. It isn’t intended to be an exhaustive explanation of all his positions but it summarizes his thoughts well and briefly goes over his journey. An interesting video from a pretty popular YouTuber.
- Gary Greenburg wonders if there is an editing error in the narrative of Genesis 1. All the days of creation conclude with the statement that “God saw that it was good” except day two. Greenburg has his own idea as to how day two may have originally ended.
- @AlchemistNon has another fantastic piece over at his blog, this time on biblical violence. Borrowing from the work of Christian apologist Randal Rauser, he argues that certain views of inerrancy force their adherents to believe that certain actions that are morally reprehensible are actually morally good.
- Biblical scholar Candida Moss wrote a piece featuring an interview with Chris Keith on the literacy of Jesus. Despite Luke’s claim that Jesus was able to read (Luke 4:16-17), given his societal status and background it seems unlikely that the carpenter from Nazareth was literate. But as the article points out, this doesn’t mean Jesus was a dummy.
- Bart Ehrman posted to his blog his recent address at the conference Regards Croisés sur la Pseudépigraphie dans l’Antiquité entitled “Did Ancient Authors Try to Deceive Their Readers?” The short answer is that they did indeed try to deceive their readers. I especially liked this: “Detecting forgery does not have to mean rejecting the texts implicated with the charge. It can and should mean, instead, placing them in their own appropriate context, appreciating them as works of literary achievement, and studying them as objects worthy of interpretation.”
The Amateur Exegete 