Mainly Stuff with some Nonsense: this week’s link love

So, at the end of another week, a quick round-up of interesting posts you may have missed, but are worthwhile. (As always, I’m leaving out posts I’ve already interacted with here.) This week’s list focusses mainly on biblical studies, but there’s a teeny bit of news and politics in there as well.

Kevin Edgecomb had a good reflection on concordances that shows a certain nostalgia for the pre-digital world but is also very much engaged with where we’re going now.

Andrew Criddle making a rare appearance on Hypotyposeis started the week with an interesting two-parter (one, two) on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism.

Dan Wallace addressed some of the misconceptions in the media stories about Codex Sinaiticus going online. Some of his points are better than others, but this is a useful summary to point people to.

Wan Wei Hsien posted a personal obituary of the priest who baptised him that offers a profound testimony to Christ-like ministry.

Charles Halton was the first (of those I read) to note Hugh Williamson’s well argued critique (PDF) of the Oxford Hebrew Bible Project. Others have noted this since, but I’ve yet to see whether any supporter of the project has answered this critique though Rob Kashow has indicated he might.

Brandon Wason has an excellent list of key books for getting started in historical Jesus research. The discussion in the comments is well worth following through as well. I remain convinced Meier and Allison should be on that list.

Flat Earth News continues to highlight the confusion of PR and journalism. A surprising amount of what we read is a lightly rewritten press release.

In last week’s round up I mentioned Brian Webster new Hebrew Grammar (it’s on order but doesn’t seem to be published here yet). Now Daniel and Tonya follow up with an interview with the author.

On the Café Apocalypsis blog Jason Meyer has an interesting post on Paul’s use of allegory in Galatians.

There was a quick and lively interchange on the vision and purpose of Bible translation. See two contributions by David Ker here and here and a response from Eddie Arthur

For a typically wry and laid-back contribution to the debunking of Ditchkins, see Steve Tilley’s post on Hitchens’ God is Not Great. Which leads neatly into the next link:

Brandon Wason posts on how to make blogs less annoying. Among his list is truncated RSS. I really like the aforementioned Steve Tilley blog, but his RSS consists solely of the title, and a frequently opaque title at that. How annoying is that?

Finally a quick UK politics post. I was much struck by Dizzy’s post on tax breaks and marriage. Is this a good idea, or is he simply trying to find a non-morality based reason for doing something that is really put forward on moral grounds.