“You need to stop clinging to the notion that there’s only one right path. You’ll waste half your time panicking you’re not on it, and the rest backtracking to find it.” – Joe Abercrombie, The Devils (Tor Publishing, 2025), “Reverses.”
- What did Jesus look like? No idea, Robyn Walsh observes. And the Gospels’ silence on the matter is, as she intimates, striking.
- Oh, the misinformation pop-apologists spew! Dan McClellan looks at an example regarding Isa 53.
- If you’re a fan of the Gospel of Thomas, Mark Edward has set up a new site that displays a passage from it that you can refresh to read a new one.
- Steve Wiggins writes, “The Bible doesn’t exist. Well, it does, but it’s an intellectual formulation, not a book.” Check out that post for more!
- Over at my website, Lex Lata wrote a review of Warren Throckmorton’s The Christian Past That Wasn’t. Another volume to add to the pile!
- I think I’ve linked to this before, but the Intertextual Bible is just an amazing resource. I’ve been translating and making notes on the epistle of James and stumbled back upon the Intertextual Bible when looking up potential cross-references.
- Michael Kok discusses ancient Christian “othering” polemics, including the idea that Christians were God’s chosen ones. A lot of it ending up being pure anti-Judaism which, Kok observes, turned into virulent anti-Semitism. And history shows us where that can lead.
- I’ve exceeded my annual goal of 52 books!
The Amateur Exegete 
Enjoyed the picks for this weekly round-up. The Gospel of Thomas passage generator looks interesting as does the Intertextual Bible site.
After a quick look at the latter, one suggestion I might make for the owner/editor/administrator or whomever would be to consider adding a few cross-references for the Book of Acts; more specifically to Paul’s conversion account in Acts 9. At least to my mind, the idea that it alludes to the Heliodorus story in 2 Maccabees 3 is pretty convincing and there was also the journal excerpt you posted some time last year on the similarities to the account of Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae.
On kind of a related note, I recently stumbled upon an interesting link on one blog to an online edition of the Codex Sinaiticus that will eventually render images of each of the pages. Unfortunately, the viewer wouldn’t load on my browser, but it could be neat to look at close-up shots of the oldest New Testament manuscripts.
Just as a heads-up, a few personal things came up, so I don’t know when I’ll be stopping by the site next but will definitely look forward to any new content you upload in the meantime.
Thanks,
J Source
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