The Trampling of the Talpiot Tomb: Part Next

Antonio has it and if you have broadband you should watch it. It’s all about the misinformation spread abroad concerning the whole Miriam/Mariah/Mary bit.

Meme-ification: Or, How To Spend 3 Minutes of Your Life That You Don’t Want Back

Chuck ‘tagged’ me in another one of the ‘games of tag’ that someone decided to call a meme. It’s how we spend our free time in biblioblogdom. Especially when we are all a bit disappointed because a certain someone who shall remain nameless let us all down and didn’t do a Biblical Studies Carnival in June like he was supposed to. Even though he has just as many hours in a day as the rest of us… 24.

Anywho, here are the rules, as set out by our Anorexic African-

This meme is very simple. You choose five Biblical studies types and invent a post that they might have written over the last couple of months. Those parodied are entitled, yea, obligated to tag five other bibliobloggers in similar fashion. Don’t forget to link to this original post.

So, here goes-

Chris Tilling: ‘How Wrong I’ve Been About Bishop Wright- And My Desire to Repent Publicly.’

Drew Tatusko: ‘You Might Call Them Gay: But I Call Them ‘Family’- The Anthropology of Presbyterian Homosexuality.’

James Spinti: ‘Riding Your Bike To the Local House Church: 49 Reasons Why The Institutional Church is Out of Gas.’

Scott Bailey: ‘I Was A Hockey Stick For Jesus, Until I Went To The Seminary School, Where I Got All My Spiritual Teeth Kicked Oooottt And Now I’m A Goalie for the Devil.’

And I realize Crossley’s already been called on but I don’t care.

James Crossley: ‘Raising Cain In Biblioblogdom: Shooting Down Birds and Other Pasttimes.’

Qumran on DVD

Robert Cargill is putting together a dvd based on his work on Qumran that is now available for download in short segments.  Check it out here.  The full dvd will be available for purchase in the very near future.  It includes a reconstruction of the entire settlement with commentary.  When I get a chance to look at it I’ll certainly have more to say.  It is – I imagine, and Bob can correct me – a sibling to the Virtual Qumran model for computer that I like so much.

Ah, the Devil

Ist der Teufel (k)eine Person? That’s the question posed to Prof. Peter Steinacker, the President of the Hessen-Nassau Church. His answer? Idea.de reports

Steinacker hatte gesagt, dass der Teufel nicht als Person existiere. „Es gibt das Böse, aber nicht als einen Gegenspieler Gottes auf Augenhöhe.“

Oh I disagree! I roomed with der Teufel in San Diego and trust me, he is very, very real.

Boy Now This Is Stupid!

The Associated Press reports

A school has confiscated an 8-year-old boy’s birthday party invitations after they were handed out during class because it said it had a duty to ensure against discrimination. The boy handed out invitations to classmates at his school in Lund, southern Sweden, but did not invite two boys because they were not his friends, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reported earlier this week. The school, 360 miles south of Stockholm, confiscated all the invitations, saying it objected because it had a duty to ensure against discrimination.

That’s just CRAZY! Those school officials should be fired right now then put in stocks in the public square and have rotten tomatoes thrown at them.

In The Midst Of Conflict With Schismatics…

Zwingli published, on the 30th of June, 1525, one of his most engaging books: Von dem Predigtamt.  As the editor of the critical edition notes,  ... der Akzent im Kennworte des titels fällt nicht auf die beiden ersten, sondern auf die letzte Silbe: das Amt wird verteidigt gegen den Geist, wie ihn die Täufer für ihre Wortverküngigung beanspruchten.

The ‘re-baptizers’ were so fixated on their own ‘inner spiritual light’ that they had virtually abandoned Scripture as source for theological guidance.  Like some modern ‘preachers’ have.  So in the book at hand Zwingli shows both the danger of such unanchored and unstable wishy-washy Christianity and the peril the false preachers, the fake spiritualists, posed for those who were foolish enough to believe them.

David Ker: On The Verge of Insanity

David Ker, you’ll know, is teetering constantly on the verge of insanity. A quick glance at his insane psychedelic hippo lets the cat out of the bag. But when he writes things like this:

Failure to keep this meme going will result in the offender being forced to listen to Todd Bentley reading the complete works of Zwingli.

he proves himself to be closer to the edge of madness than anyone feared before. First, Todd has probably never heard of Zwingli, or Luther, or Paul, or Jesus for that matter. Second, methinks he’s less than able to read the German or Latin Zwingli wrote. And third, if he doesn’t care what the Bible says, he certainly isn’t going to care what the greatest theologian in the history of the Church has said.

But more than fearing the madness of Todd Bentley (and his quite mad followers), I fear for my little, thin, anorexic Ker. He’s got me really worried this time.

Things I Believe That May Surprise Some, But Shouldn’t

I believe that Scripture is inspired by God.  And I believe that talk of scriptural infallibility and inerrancy is blasphemy- for only God is perfect.

I believe that, in scripture, we read everything we need to know of God and humanity- in that order.

I believe in God the Father, Almighty maker of heaven and earth.  I don’t know how he did it (I’m not that smart), but I know he’s the ‘first cause’ (because I’m too smart to think it all just ‘happened’).

I believe in Jesus Christ, His very unique son (though all are God’s children); that he was born of the Virgin Mary (yes, I believe that too); suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried.  That he was raised on the third day and that he ascended into heaven.

I believe in the Holy Spirit (though not the self promoting Holy Spirit of much Pentecostalism), the holy Christian Church, the communion of the saints, the resurrection of the dead (yes even that!) and the life everlasting (and, everlasting punishment as well).

In short, I am a big fan of the Apostle’s Creed.  I think it the finest, most precise definition of what it means to be a Christian ever penned.  That may surprise some, but it shouldn’t.

Thought of the Day

When Christianity decided, in the 1980’s, that it was more concerned with popularity than truth, it planted the seeds of its own destruction.

The Future of Protestantism in the United States

Idea.de reports

In den USA wird der Protestantismus seine Stellung als Mehrheitsreligion in den kommenden Jahren vermutlich einbüßen. Das hat eine der umfangsreichsten Studien zu Glauben und Religion in den USA ergeben.

In sum- Protestantism is on the way out as the majority religion in the United States because people are abandoning it. Read the whole cheery piece.