Pi Day: the 14th day of the 3rd month, at about the 15th hour, which would be 3 PM…
The Lord’s Prayer in the Heliand
What, you might ask, is the Heliand? As good Saints, you will remember that Nephi “likened scripture” to himself, his people, and his situation. Well, he wasn’t the only one. In the 9th century an unknown Northern European warrior-monk-poet took it upon himself to “liken” the Gospels to his own people and situation: a chieftain society, a defeated people, a nation forcibly Christianized by Charlemagne. The result was the Heliand, a re-imaging of the Jesus story.
Historical Jesus: Italian Trial Ends
An atheist who sued a small-town priest for saying that Jesus Christ existed has had his case thrown out of court. The judge said Luigi Cascioli should himself face charges for slandering Father Enrico Righi.
The Exegesis of a Stop Sign
Suppose you’re traveling to work and you see a stop sign. What do you do? That depends on how you exegete (interpret) the stop sign.
Secular Sam’s Guide to the OT: The Lineage and Honors of Cain
No story in the OT is ever wasted, and the story of Cain and his descendants is no exception. Like the narratives preceding it, it continues to explain the “how” and the “why” of human existence – it has an etiological function. More importantly, however, it also furthers the theological motives of its author.
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Historical Jesus 5: The Baptism of Jesus
Parts 3 and 4 of this series on the Historical Jesus were a summary of John Meier’s ten criteria for establishing a sense of the historicity of an event. In this segment, we turn our attention to an example of Meier’s criteria in action: the case for the historicity of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.
“A” is for Adam “in whose fall we sinnéd all”
My GD class was hinting around last week that there is a firm distinction between the terms “sin” and “transgression” when talking about Gen 3. Of course, Gen 3 makes no claim about the event, either way. And it seems to me that such terminological precision is not a feature of Paul’s original comparison of Christ and Adam in Rom 5:12-21. When Paul does make a distinction it is transgression, not sin, that is the stronger term.
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Historical Jesus 4: More Criteria
Since the majority of our information about Jesus comes from the Gospels, when we try to work out the details of the historical Jesus, we are obliged to sift and weigh these sources. In Part 3, we opened a discussion of John Meier’s ten criteria for this effort with the three strongest. Today, we continue with the remaining two strong criteria, then summarize the five weak ones.
Bibleworks 7 Is Out
Here’s the announcement of Bibleworks 7. I’ll probably be ordering the update. I am, however, interested in what others think of the “unlocks.”
Zerwick –> always handy
Blass, Debrunner, and Funk –> likewise, when you’re not in a library
Critical appartus stuff –> probably a good idea, at some point
But how about Comfort & Barrett? Or Balz & Schneider?
In Sorrow Shalt Thou Bring Forth Children
This little narrative describes opposition to the use of chloroform to ease the pain of delivery based on the divine decree that childbirth was to be painful. If it’s true, it’s one for the “stranger than fiction” file. I’ll try to run down more on it over the week. In the meantime, I see no author explicitly listed on the site I took it from, but the URL is here:
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