I was finally able to listen to part 2 of "Pete ruins Exodus" over at the podcast The Bible for Normal People. As usual, great material looking at the beginning stages of Moses' call to Egypt, including that bizarre scene in Exodus 4:24-26. The next installment of Koine Greek's reading of the Gospel of Mark... Continue Reading →
"Aren’t mistakes, contradictions, myth, etc exactly what you would expect from a non-divine book?"- @AlchemistNon @AlchemistNon has a new post over at his blog on why he left Christianity. Our stories have a lot of similarities: a fervency for evangelism, continuous reading of the Bible, and more. But he wrestled with many of the problems... Continue Reading →
Candida Moss (University of Birmingham) wrote a piece back in March on Apollonius, the miracle-working son of God that is often compared to Jesus. In it Moss, a prolific writer and scholar, observes that many in the ancient Mediterannean were considered the son of this or that God and that the miracles of Jesus "weren't completely unprecedented."... Continue Reading →
"For atheists, I would say your life is not meaningless even if you no longer believe you are for something like a hammer is for hammering nails- or even if you believe the universe is absurd! Just because you are not an instrument of someone else’s will, it does not follow that you cannot live... Continue Reading →
"To be clear, some religious people evaluate their subjective experience as a piece of the evidential pie without taking this strong of a stance – but I want to address those who attempt to build atop the 'unshakable' ground of religious experience. The epistemology illustrated creates a host of problems. If taken seriously, it is... Continue Reading →
It’s gotten all mixed up, you see, as it was bound to after thousands and thousands of years of dogma and tradition. Religion doesn’t spawn morality. Intelligence spawns morality,which inevitably gives birth (in intelligent enough species) to religion.Now, some people find that religion helps hone and focus their morality, that it gives their morality a purpose... Continue Reading →
"Mark, wanting to make a theological point, locates the event in a place whose name is associated with casting out demons – the language, as Marcus points out, does kinda support this. This strengthens the exorcism theme of the pericope– seems legit. A few years later, Matthew, using Mark as a source for his own gospel, either misses Mark’s theological point or... Continue Reading →
"One would certainly not expect any literary reference to Christians or Christianity or Jesus himself in Roman authors of the first century. Christianity was simply a tiny (TINY) religious movement that no one had heard of. Most Romans would not even have heard the name Christian until probably the middle or end of the second... Continue Reading →
"The stories of the ancestors of the Israelites do not come from any one period but developed over time. It is best to see the ancestors as composite characters." - John McDermott Bart Ehrman asks and answers the question "Why does it matter if Mark's Gospel was written first?" What it boils down to is... Continue Reading →
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