Posts tagged as:

Bible Links

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 [...]

Read the full article →

The new five statement bible summary meme

November 24, 2009

Summarising is a mug’s game, or possibly a meme. After my attack on Packer’s summary of the New Testament yesterday, David Ker suggested that summarising the message might make a good meme. So, allowing for creative adaptation of the rules, here’s a go at some rules for a new meme.
Summarise the Bible in five statements, [...]

Read the full article →

Simon Holloway and the Humpty-Dumpty approach to atheism

November 23, 2009

Simon Holloway posts a very interesting piece on why he doesn’t regard himself, or wish to be regarded by others as an atheist. In the process he makes some interesting observations about the narrative nature of “God” in the Tanakh.
I think, by the way, he is wrong in calling beliefs about a God or gods [...]

Read the full article →

Doh! The Bible’s got books in it, not verses

November 23, 2009

In a post today Scot McKnight starts his (sadly accurate) comments on people’s attitudes to Job.

Simply put, the problem with the Book of Job is that it is too long for most folks, too long for most preachers to preach all the way through, and too long for Bible study groups.

It seems to me the [...]

Read the full article →

Keeping the adulterous woman in the gospel

October 19, 2009

The story of the woman caught in adultery seems to pose a particular problem for some evangelicals. Hitherto in one camp have been the “original autograph” hunters: they are clear it’s not scripture. In the opposite camp are the majority text fundamentalists. Both seem to me to want their authority located in black and white [...]

Read the full article →

Bible Idol and the talismanic text

October 14, 2009

I was struck by a verse in one of today’s set readings:

And they opened the book of the law to inquire into those matters about which the Gentiles consulted the likenesses of their gods (τὰ ὁμοιώματα τῶν εἰδώλων αὐτῶν). (1 Macc 3:48)

Presumably this means some kind of augury, by some kind of random verse selection. [...]

Read the full article →

An alphabetical oddity of Bible translation

October 10, 2009

It doesn’t seem to matter very much whether they adopt sense-for-sense or word-for-word theories of translation. Most translations of the Bible, when it comes to Revelation 1:8, 21:6 and 22:13, seem to stick to the Lord describing himself as “The Alpha and the Omega”.
There are two exceptions I know of: TEV and derivatives have “the [...]

Read the full article →

Scripture and tradition: a circular faith

October 4, 2009

(This post is one of a sporadic series on the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles)
The two articles about scripture are followed by a short one on the creeds.

VIII. Of the Three Creeds

The Three Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius’s Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, ought thoroughly to be received and [...]

Read the full article →

Nehemiah, peculiar prayer postures, and a bad pun

October 1, 2009

I have often thought that Nehemiah 8:1-12 is one of the richer and more resonant passages in the Writings both for historical and theological reasons. However, what struck me about it at Mass this morning (for it was the first reading) was not any of the deep theological themes, but two details regarding liturgical posture.

And [...]

Read the full article →

The wrong Bible and the books we try not to read

September 23, 2009

Joseph Kelly has a rather good post introducing Ecclesiastes, in which he suggests the nearest English phrase that captures “hevel” (vanity, meaninglessness, emptiness) is “shit happens.” I commend his post to all clayboy’s readers.
One memory this triggered was of a talk I did some twenty years ago on bits of the Bible we usually don’t [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries