Sep 15 2007
Round-up: From G-d to a great put-down
Things I would love to have commented on more fully this last week and didn’t either find the time, or the scintillating words my thoughts, had I found time to think them, would have deserved.
- Chris Heard almost joins in the multi-blog started by Suzanne McCarthy on Psalm 68 and the names of God. Instead he ends up ruminating on the problems of using proper names for God, the issues this causes for Jewish people, and the near impossibility of reading some OT texts properly without using proper names. (Job is a good example IMO). I must confess my own irritation with Christians who write “G-d” .
- John Hobbins offers a proposal about naming the authors of pseudepigrapha, and explains why he won’t call Dionysius “pseudo.” It’s an inetersting point, but I don’t know where it leaves me when trying to talk about say, the authors of 1 and 2 Clement in close proximity. Calling both Clement is too confusing.
- Tony Chartrand-Burke drew my attention to Stephen Patterson’s scathing review of Craig Evans’ Fabricating Jesus. I’m seriously tempted to buy it, just to see if it’s as bad as the review says – not something I assume Patterson intended.
- Iyov notes the insanity of the US Justice Department’s approach to religious reading.
- Lingamish has problems with English, but perhaps he’ll learn it someday.
- Three cartoons worth catching: one on Targuman, one from Dave Walker’s Cartoon Blog and the last on Pharyngula.
- Thanks to Henry Neufeld I took a look at (possibly about to be closed down that mean Trinity Evangelical Diviniyt School who have no sense of humour) The Secret Diary of D. A. Carson (aka the Don). Enjoy it now in case the censors get there too soon.
- The blog Parchment and Pen always fascinates me: I never know if they’re going to come up with something that showcases the best of open-minded and open-hearted evangelicalism, or something I struggle to get my head around. It was the latter with this statement by C Michael Patton: “most Christians remember where they were when they first heard about God’s election - predestination”. Er, sorry, no, not a lot.
- Scott Stephens guest-posting on Faith and Theology has a wonderful quote about Bp John Spong “whose books I’ve always found very easy to put down, and almost impossible to pick back up again”. Is this a great put-down, or what?