MetaCatholic

Some bits and pieces by way of a reflection on the last year.

First a round-up of ten (more-or-less) posts, series or interactions that I have found particularly illuminating or interesting. They come in no particular order, and the only rule I gave myself was not to select any single blog for more than one of the ten entries. Apologies to all those many blogs I read that I haven’t mentioned. But in one way or another these posts represent reasons why I’m glad I’ve taken up blogging this year.

• Chris Tilling’s examination of Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, a book about which I must confess to feeling extremely ambivalent.
• This (unusually lengthy for him) thought-provoking post by AKMA on hermeneutics which takes Rowan Williams’ lecture on reading scripture as its starting point.
• John Hobbins’ excellent and stimulating series on the Canon, which begins here. All the posts in the series are linked to in his left-hand sidebar around halfway down.
• I found Tony Chartrand-Burke’s two posts listing his top ten faulty arguments in anti-apocrypha apologetics particularly helpful material to ponder.
• I liked Mark Goodacre’s recent series on the Mark-Q overlaps. One of the great things about Mark’s blogging is the way he sometimes uses his blog to try out ideas when he’s working towards a paper. I can’t help thinking this is a better approach than the trade-secret approach to ideas.
• Some atheist blogs provide thoughtful interactions, others are just rants. In the former category comes Duane Smith, and this particular post is a good example.
• On a related note, James McGrath offered a particularly stimulating post on the methodological differences between cosmologists and biologists.
• Among the many interesting contributions from April DeConick were these three posts touching on the question of historicity and the Acts of the Apostles. This is a subject that often tends to produce wildly extreme statements, and while I suspect I’m more conservative on this question the April, these provided a nicely balanced approach to the question.
• One of the many enjoyable blogabout disagreements of the year came between Michael Bird (here and here) and Loren Rosson (here and here) on the “I” of Romans 7. I have to say I like a friendly spat.
• Finally, I select what in retrospect is my own personal favourite post from this blog.

I’ve now been blogging here since the beginning of May, so am still a few months short of a full year. This is the first time my attempts to blog haven’t petered out once an initial burst of enthusiasm was over. Looking back, I see that, in order, the three most popular posts have been:

• Photos of the Droitwich floods this summer: the first time I was aware of getting the top spot for a Google “I’m feeling lucky” search.
• My totally unofficial Biblical Studies Carnivalette (which seems to have put some kind of curse on the real thing).
• My post John Hobbins – fundamentalist, Calvinist, inerrantist. It wasn’t intended as an insult, but it seems to have sounded enough like one for people to come flocking to it. There’s nothing like the hint of a fight to draw a crowd.