As I work through assignments related to the infancy narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, I am surprised how many students quote other sources claiming that Matthew gives Joseph’s genealogy while Luke gives Mary’s. There is only one major problem with this suggestion: it isn’t what these Gospels say. Both give genealogies that are explicitly said to be the lineage of Joseph. There is no way to interpret them as saying otherwise. To make Luke’s genealogy Mary’s, one... Read more

I’ve just learned that the web site of the NCSE’s response to the movie Expelled is now “live”. It is called “Expelled Exposed“. Take a look! Read more

“Stein employs the common dodge of enumerating all the admittedly unanswered questions in evolutionary theory and using this to refute the whole idea. But all scientific knowledge is built this way. A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can’t therefore argue that the net doesn’t exist. Just ask the fish” (Jeffrey Kluger, “Ben Stein Dukes it Out with Darwin“, TIME magazine, Thursday, Apr. 10, 2008). HT The Panda’s Thumb Read more

This piece of news was shared by J. C. Baker, from the AAR web site: Board Action Regarding Independent Annual MeetingsApril 14, 2008 Dear Fellow Members of the American Academy of Religion: I write today to alert you to an action taken by your Board of Directors at its meeting this past weekend. In light of the scheduling and logistical problems connected with the proposed Independent Annual Meetings, and given the views our members expressed in our recent member survey,... Read more

I hope that no one who knows my views and reads my blog with regularity will experience heart failure, or even more mild ill effects, when they realize what this post is. It is an essentially positive review of a book (The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues) whose author Mike Gene considers himself a proponent of Intelligent Design. This is not to suggest that I find all of the author’s points and arguments persuasive or satisfying. But what Mike... Read more

Ben Myers made a widget for his blog. Must be contagious… Get the Exploring Our Matrix widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Read more

I watched the movie Atonement last night, and couldn’t help thinking about the New Testament authors. Did the Gospel authors seek to make “atonement” for their failures much as the author in the film did? Certainly this seems to be the case in the stories of Jesus’ burial, where his burial gets more and more honorable as one follows through the canonical Gospels. If there is something that puzzles me, it is why they felt the need to do that... Read more

[A review of books by Spong and Wright, originally posted on my old blog on June 4th, 2007] I deliberately chose to read the two books I am writing about in parallel, more-or-less simultaneously, so as to better be able to reflect on the similarities and contrasts between them. Both are written by authors who are bishops in the Anglican/Episcopal church. One is John Selby Spong’s A New Christianity for a New World, while the other is Tom Wright’s Simply... Read more

Starting with a quote on Maggi Dawn, I found myself tracking down the full source of the quote on another blog, Commonplaces. It is a letter attributed to Dorothy L. Sayers, which addresses itself to what “average people” think about, and think they know about, Christianity. No specific primary source is identified in any of the places I have seen it quoted. The content, nonetheless, is worth quoting as thought-provoking discussion fodder: The only letter I ever want to address... Read more

Review of Steve Moyise and Maarten J. J. Menken (editors), Deuteronomy in the New Testament: The New Testament and the Scriptures of Israel (Library of New Testament Studies, 358; New York: T & T Clark, 2007). Deuteronomy in the New Testament follows volumes in the same series on the Psalms and Isaiah in the New Testament, working down the list of the most frequently-cited books from the Jewish Scriptures/Old Testament. As Deuteronomy includes the Decalogue, references and allusions to which... Read more