From the monthly archives:

December 2009

How things changed in the noughties

December 31, 2009

The millennium proved not to be the end of the world, just the start of a very noughty decade.
Okay, let’s get this out of the way first. I know that technically and pedantically 2010 is the last year of the previous decade and not the first year of the next, but sometimes pedantic technicalities are [...]

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Is there going to be a 49th Biblical Studies Carnival?

December 30, 2009

In a quick round up of what’s been interesting over the holidays, Mike Kok says of the hist-crit po-mo debate (see the previous post also).

Anyways, this is a very learned debate and deserves to be front and center in the biblical studies carnival.

This prompts me to ask: is there going to be a carnival? The [...]

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Early Christian history, postmodernism and imaginary texts

December 30, 2009

There has been a kind of long Christmas rumble going on about doing early Christian history in relation to postmodernism (whatever exactly is meant by that). April DeConick posted a week before Christmas defending the historian’s approach. (The comment thread – especially Christ Chris Weimer’s – is well worth a read too.) James Crossley yesterday [...]

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Going for a new look

December 29, 2009

I’ll be tinkering with the design over the next few days, but I’m aiming for less busy pages, and a cleaner overall look
On a by the by, it’s been rather nice to take a few days off from blogging. Normal service will resume in the New Year. Abnormal service may still happen between now and [...]

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Matthew and Luke: different takes on the virgin birth?

December 24, 2009

I think current and ongoing arguments over the historicity of the virginal conception of Jesus tend to obscure some of the differences in Matthew and Luke’s rather different narrations of it.
Luke seems to do two things with it. First he backgrounds it with a range of OT echoes of unlikely conceptions, accompanying it with another [...]

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Christmas picture and poem: Greetings

December 24, 2009
Xmas-greeting.jpg

This is a version of the image I created for my “by hand and snail mail” card this year. It was accompanied by this poem by Robert Southwell, Jesuit poet and martyr in the Reformation era.
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart [...]

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Dawn: today’s Advent calendar

December 24, 2009
Advent-4-Thu.jpg

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Gold: today’s Advent calendar

December 23, 2009
Advent-4-Wed.jpg

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Ugandan Talibanglicans and the insane Christian Voice

December 22, 2009

I haven’t bothered before to blog on the odious Ugandan proposals for the judicial murder of gay people. It seems to me that most expressions of Western outrage and condemnation are more likely than not to be counter-productive. However, I note from Richard Bartholomew that the laughing stock of the self-proclaimed Christian Voice, Stephen Green, [...]

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Shoplifting for Jesus

December 22, 2009

The Church Mouse, not unreasonably, thinks the priest who told people it was all right to go shoplifting for Christmas is a bit of a twit – to put it mildly.
One commenter on his post draws attention to a bizarre defence by Civitas of this strange advice. Civitas describes its role as offering “primary education [...]

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