From the category archives:

Scripture

Living with texts of terror

March 9, 2010

Help! I’ve been tagged by Lingamish in a highly provocative post. In a nutshell he writes:

What do we do about the curses, the bloodshed, and the vengeance found in the Old Testament? The answer is very simple: we skip it.

In making his point he willingly acknowledges the ways in which the pleas for vengeance in [...]

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History and science – the human errors of Jesus and the Bible?

February 24, 2010

The title of this post is, I point out, a question. It arose because I was struck by the openness and honesty of the comment David Couchman left on this post. He said:

On the one hand, I’m very uncomfortable with the kind of conservative position which says ‘if science seems to contradict the Bible, so [...]

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Is “the Bible alone” an oxymoron?

February 23, 2010

I felt it was about time for a controversial question. Occasionally one will come across an otherwise well-thought out post which insists that “the Bible alone” is, or should be, the basis for – well, pretty much everything genuinely Christian, but especially doctrine and ethics. It has a reasonable pedigree in the Reformation. But does [...]

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Themes against verses? Arguments over women and men.

February 22, 2010

I’ve noted several posts recently on the ongoing rumbling about the roles of women and men. In the UK this has followed the blackmailing letter Reform published for the General Synod: “Give us our own episcopal enclave or we’ll hurt you.” Elsewhere in the world it has different triggers. It never quite seems to go [...]

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Danger – woman teaching? Hoist on her own petard.

February 15, 2010

I hadn’t previously had anything to say about the latest outbreak of fundamentalist misogyny in the Church of England: the vicar and curate outraging their congregation by telling women to shut up and submit to their husbands.
Subsequently, it seems that the leaflet of “biblical” teaching on women was not the work of the Reform vicar, [...]

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The Bible: a (secret) History (of women)

February 14, 2010

Tonight’s episode of Channel 4’s The Bible: a History was different again. The Daughters of Eve was presented by historian Bettany Hughes looking at the place of women in the Bible, and trying to uncover a perspective other than the caricature of traditional misogyny. In some ways, I would say this was the best of [...]

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Witherington’s NT ministry: is tradition trumping exegesis?

February 11, 2010

In a post today Ben Witherington repeats a long-standing Protestant argument about priesthood and the New Testament. For him the teaching of the Bible is obvious. The unbiblical nature of the larger part of Christianity in its hankering after priests is equally obvious. In this post I don’t want to engage with the larger theological [...]

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Going clubbing with the Bible (mainly anyone who disagrees)

February 7, 2010

The C4 series The Bible: A History is so loosely interlinked that “series” is almost a misnomer. I gave some attention to the first episode on creation. I suppose one could characterise that by saying Jacobsen wanted to develop an agnostic aestheticism that valued the text as myth and literature. Last week’s episode was essentially [...]

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Hebrews and the Temple’s destruction

January 27, 2010

Ken Schenk posts a summary handout on the situation of Hebrews. The letter is, of course, his area of greatest expertise, so I raise this question with some diffidence. However, if I understand him rightly, he dates the letter not that long after the destruction of the temple.
Hebrews is, of course, quite hard to situate [...]

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The most ignored message of Jesus?

January 21, 2010

I suspect there are several contenders (if not more) for the title of “Most ignored passage in the gospels” or “Bit of Jesus’ teaching we most like to skip.” Many of the responses to Haiti reveal a desperation for simple meanings, clear patterns and quasi-magical views relating divine and human behaviours. They lead to to [...]

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