How Jim West Solves Math Problems

Atheist Converts After Mock Prayer is Answered

Stories like this stink of trouble. A self-confessed atheist has become a believer after mocking God by sarcastically praying for his mother to win the lottery. However, his joke prayer was amazingly answered as the next day his mother won $1 million on the New York Lottery Sweet Million game. Sal Bentivegna, 28, who did [...]

Richard Carrier on ‘Sources of the Jesus Tradition’

I have my own problems with this book.  Especially in light of the other superb books Joe Hoffmann has put together in the past; this one seems to have been rushed.  As someone who had been a big part of the JP for about a year, it’s a shame to see some of the interesting [...]

A Dead Liturgical 4-day Giveaway – James R. Davila | Unsettled Christianity

I’m passing this along because I really want this book.  But you should do this anyway; promoting top notch scholarship is quite important since, as Joel notes, there are more books by Joel Olsteen than actual scholars in most public libraries.  Follow these steps to get in the lineup! 1.) Contact your local library and [...]

“Religion Created Civilization?” A Response to Brad Hirschfield on Göbekli Tepe

It’s an interesting concept.  Brad Hirschfield writes: For years, historians, archeologists, anthropologists and pretty much all of the other “ologists” have agreed that agriculture created civilization, including religion, as we have known it for the past 12,000 to 15,000 years. The assumption was that settling down to lives of farming, people built cities, created art [...]

Children: The Unforeseen Victims of Family Radio

And let’s be blunt about this:  Adults have the ability to make rational decisions with their lives, their money, their property. This includes adults who recognize the farce that Camping was running, the dilettantism, the failure of his predictions.  Children, however, are far less capable of determining the difference between fiction and reality.  And unfortunately [...]

Family Radio’s New Homepage

Can anyone say… “Well, that was fast!” Notice three things: It was updated on May 22, 2011. No mention of judgment day. NO APOLOGY!

Quote of the Day – Mark Goodacre

I was explaining to Mark that I had recently been asked to reinput Greek text from the unicode (which I had supplied) to SPIonic because this individual could not see the unicode script.  For those who don’t know, SPIonic is a Greek font that was put out by SBL’s publishing wing (now defunct) known as [...]

Rolad Boer: ‘The Unbearable Idealism of Biblical Scholarship’

Roland raises some very important concerns about idealism in the Academy in a new article on Bible and Interpretation.  I have to admit, I’m an idealist (and an optimist–a deadly combination!), and I often find myself self-reflecting on the value of my own research.  This part of his op-ed struck me as important: The problem [...]

Artifacts and the Media: Lead Codices and the Public Portrayal of History

I have a new article published at Bible and Interpretation.  Here are some snippets: Two months ago an article hit the media streams hard and fast, announcing that new artifacts had been discovered by a Bedouin containing the earliest known Christian writings, possibly even the words of the figure of Jesus himself.1 With a headline [...]