“Young-Earth creationism is a relatively new theology with a dinosaur fetish.” – Valarie H. Ziegler, “The Monsters of Young-Earth Creationists,” in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters, edited by Brandon R. Grafius and John W. Morehead (Oxford University Press, 2025), 421.
- Do the many cross references in the Bible prove that the Bible came from God? No, it doesn’t rightly argues Dan McClellan. (Seriously, I wish Christians would stop making these kinds of arguments. They’re just not good.)
- John Nelson writes about the historical case for the empty tomb tradition. Personally, I’m skeptical of the empty tomb narratives but I tend to waffle quite a bit. Today I might think Jesus wasn’t buried in a tomb. Tomorrow I might think he was. Nelson (as always) does a good job boiling down the issues and evidence, what little there is.
- For those interested in the intersection of horror and the Bible, there are now three volumes in the Horror and Scripture series from Bloomsbury. I’ve got a physical copy of Brandon Grafius’ Reading the Bible with Horror (read) and a digital version of Heather Macumber’s Recovering the Monstrous in Revelation (haven’t read). Steve Wiggins’ Nightmares with the Bible is still a little out of reach for me financially but I definitely plan to add it to the library at some point.
- Who was Baal and what does he have to do with the Israelite deity Yahweh? Andrew Mark Henry discusses.
- J. David Stark talks about the making of the forthcoming Ancient Christian Study Bible. This looks like it will be an excellent jumping off point for those interested in seeing how early Christians understood biblical texts. You can also read the press release covering this new addition. One concern I have is that given the scope of the work, for it to fit in a single volume means the paper used is going to create bleed-through, something that plagues The SBL Study Bible.
- I’m a sucker for some shade between biblical scholars. Elon Gilad offers an example involving famed scholar of the Hebrew Bible Umberto Cassuto that is just perfection.
- Over at reconstructedbible.com, Michael (formerly known as Mirra Scriptura on the socials) examines Psalm 110 and proposes a theory he calls “Adon Swap” that explains the passage as a demotion of the deity of El Elyon from a god to a mere priest.
- One more book and I’ll be officially have way to my goal!
The Amateur Exegete 