Over at the website The Bible and Interpretation there is a piece by religious scholar Jay Williams on "Eden, the Tree of Life, and the Wisdom of the Serpent." It is at once both a very interesting and very bizarre piece. Williams points out not long after the piece begins that the serpent isn't Satan as Christians would like... Continue Reading →
Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures (Oxford University Press, 2014), 40-41. There are...important differences in content [between the two creation accounts]. For example, the first account of creation opens with a watery chaos; in the second, the world is an arid landscape. In the first, animals are... Continue Reading →
Note: This will be the final Weekly Roundup of 2019. Claude Mariottini recently posted a piece explaining why the common Christian interpretation of Melchizedek as a Christophany doesn't add up and serves to undermine the claims made in the book of Hebrews that Jesus was a priest "according to the order of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 7:11).... Continue Reading →
"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... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuiOLNLVhyc&t=45s Texts discussed: Genesis 1:26, 3:22, 11:7; 1 Kings 22:19-23; Job 1:6, 38:7; Psalm 82:1. Recommended reading: Michael D. Coogan, The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, third edition (Oxford University Press, 2014), 38.Mark S. Smith, The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 (Fortress Press, 2010).
I don't do a whole lot with my YouTube channel but I really ought to change that. So this is (hopefully) the first of many videos offering my amateurish answers to various biblical studies related questions over at Quora. My goal is to keep these videos short and informative (of course, that was my plan... Continue Reading →
"All translations of great works are of course no more than approximations of the original, in some places happy ones, in some necessarily imperfect. But respecting the sheer physicality of the Bible’s language together with a stylistic decorum appropriate to the Hebrew diction can help readers sense something of the world quite different from ours... Continue Reading →
"I propose the final edition of Genesis is the result of a similar process by an editor of the Holiness school of pre-exilic Israel, who combined and organized these various materials into a continuous and meaningful whole." - Bill T. Arnold Over on her blog @thclosetatheist has posted her review of Lee Strobel's book The Case for... Continue Reading →
"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her...." - Jesus In Mark 10:1-12 we read of an encounter between "some Pharisees" and Jesus over the question of divorce. They ask him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" (10:2, NRSV) to which Jesus replies, "What did Moses command you?"... Continue Reading →
A podcast exploring the most read and least understood anthology the world has ever known.
Amateur Exegete
Recent Comments