When I first started seminary back in 2005, I remember thinking that my faith would be more secure and more robust because of everything I was learning.
What I’ve found is that the more I learn, the more I need to work on my faith.
Faith doesn’t become easier with more learning, it becomes more difficult.
The end of the year is upon us all and it is usually tradition for bloggers to list their favorite books of the past year. As someone who loves liturgy, who am I to break with tradition?
This list is broken up into two parts: the first is for popular level books and the second is for academic books. I realize that that is subjective so if you have a problem with it then please send your complaints scribbled on the bottom of a Nintendo Wii to my house. Otherwise your complaints fall on deaf ears!
Also, a few of these books are older, but I just got around to reading them this year. Please forgive me for being so incredibly out of style. The lists are in alphabetical order by author, five in each category, sans annotation. Read the rest of this entry »
Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church, recently had a seizure. After going to the doctor, he found out that the cause was a tumor located in his frontal lobe. If you aren’t familiar with Matt’s ministry, he is an extremely gifted pastor and one of the podcasts that I look forward the most to listening to each week. Here is a letter that the elders at the Village put on their Facebook page today: Read the rest of this entry »
In case you haven’t heard via Twitter or some other blogs, Pete Enns has written some great essays on the BioLogos blog entitled Science and the Sacred. The latest essay focuses on ANE mythology and, what Pete calls, “genre calibration.” Here is a peek at what Pete is getting at: Read the rest of this entry »
Quick update from my phone since the wireless at the Marriott is sketchy. I think my paper went well. There were a few friends and fellow biblioblogger present, which was exciting. Don’t think I blew anyone away, but I didn’t get tore up in the question and answer time. I’ll count that as a win!
This will most likely be my last post for the next week, unless I shoot off a few posts from my iPhone while at the SBL annual meeting. I leave this Friday morning for New Orleans and am looking forward to meeting with old friends and also meeting up with some people that I communicate with through various biblioblogs and Twitter. I’m also looking forward to the book exhibit, meeting with some professors, and a few papers that sound very interesting. If you need some SBL Annual Meeting advice, check out the wisdom of Mark Goodacre.
In case you were wondering, here is the information for my paper (although I’m sure everyone has it highlighted on their calendar):
23-210
Book of Psalms
11/23/2009
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: St. Charles Suite – MRW. H. Bellinger, Baylor University, Presiding
Will Kynes, University of Cambridge
Doxology in Disputation: The Use of Psalms 8 and 107 in the Book of Job (30 min)
Arthur Boulet, Princeton Theological Seminary
The Prayer of Manasseh: A Window Into the Shape and Shaping of the Hebrew Psalter (30 min)
Roy Garton, Baylor University
The Death of a Psalmist: A Structural Analysis and Literary Reading of Psalm 88 (30 min)
Joel M. LeMon, Emory University
The Ethics of the Psalms and the Problem of Violence (30 min)
Christopher M. Corwin, New College Berkeley
Psalms 23-29: A Sequence? (30 min)
If you are on Twitter, check out the hashtag #sbl09 for updates from attendees who are on Twitter.
If you’re going to be at SBL and see me wondering around aimlessly, be sure to stop me and say hello.
Just found out this movie is now on iTunes. I will be begging my wife Read the rest of this entry »
I was alerted via Scot McKnight’s blog that Tim LaHaye is at it again. Zondervan and LaHaye have an agreement for a new end-times themed series entitled The End. It is not specified how many books will be in this series, only that the first book entitled Edge of Apocalypse will be published in April of 2010.
What hit me is that LaHaye is a caricature of the end-times obsessed, prophecy-chart toting, dispensationalism that many in my generation find quite odd. I know people who believe in a Read the rest of this entry »
Now I understand why John Walton is so insightful when it comes to the background of the Hebrew Bible! (I hope he didn’t save any of those peanut better and jelly on manna sandwiches!)
The narratives of the death of Judas (Matt 27.3-10 and Acts 1.15-26) present themselves as a perpetual problem to those who seek to harmonize parts of Scripture. Here are the two passages:
Matthew 27.3-10 [NRSV]
When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.” After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one on whom a price had been set, on whom some of the people of Israel had set a price, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.”
Acts 1.15-26 [NRSV]
In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred twenty persons) and said, “Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus— for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” (Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. This became known to all the residents of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood.) “For it is written in the book of Psalms,
‘Let his homestead become desolate,
and let there be no one to live in it’;
and ‘Let another take his position of overseer.’ So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.” So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.
The usual harmonization states that Judas hung himself (ala Matthew’s account) and remained there for a few days while his dead body became swollen. Then the branch on which he hung himself broke Read the rest of this entry »
