I’ve seen several peopl, including Rowland Crowcher, post this ”infographic” on Facebook. Since I’ve spoken quite a bit on “Family in the Bible”, and am due to speak to a leaders group from the NZ Christian Network on the “Theology of Marriage” really soon it makes me hopping mad! In one sense the graphic is “true”. [...]
Browsing Posts in Bible: OT
Yesterday I was asked: If Noah lived before the law was revealed to Moses, how did he know how to distinguish “clean” and “unclean” animals? It is still holiday time (it’s the summer in NZ, though with all the rain and cold in recent weeks you wouldn’t believe it) so my answer was less full [...]
I have read the Bible professionally, and encouraged and taught others to read it, in three continents. The situations differed, including an African and a Western University, a Baptist theological college and a Bible School in a refugee camp. I have also supervised some exciting theses that develop interesting perspectives on understanding the Bible. So [...]
Psalm 90 makes a fine reading for a new year. Through the psalm, time (and especially the haunting disparity between short brutish human time and the timeless divine reality) is a strong theme. The psalm is peppered with time words: dor generation in v.1 (x2) b’terem before in v.2 shanah year in vv.4, 5, 9, [...]
I feel inordinately virtuous. Before a lesurely breakfast of porridge with blueberries and brazil nuts at 9, I had not only fed my animals before I fed myself (as my grandad taught me) and read the blogs and “done” my email, as usual, but I’d marked the last of the late assignments, cut a couple [...]
In previous posts in this series I have been critical of Wayne Grudem’s interpretations of Gen 1-3: Biblical understandings of human gender: Part One: Beginnings Biblical understandings of human gender: How to read the Bible: Larger passages trump verses Biblical understandings of human gender: Part Two: The creation of human gender Biblical understandings of human [...]
Open Bible has a fascinating on post Applying Sentiment Analysis to the Bible. Sentiment analysis involves algorithmically determining if a piece of text is positive (“I like cheese”) or negative (“I hate cheese”). Think of it as Kurt Vonnegut’s story shapes backed by quantitative data. The post started with a plot of the data for [...]
Previous posts about biblical teaching on family ( What is a family? and Does the Bible present a preferred pattern of family) led to lively discussion. How do we use the Bible rightly to establish teaching on family? This post addresses two aspects. The Bible uses different sorts of text to teach different ways. We [...]
The Southern Baptist Convention is apparently considering a name change. Jim West is upset (about this, as he is about so many other things). He’s thinking himself that he’d “like to follow suit and consider a name-change for myself “. I have a great suggestion: How about changing your name to “Southern Baptist Convention” the [...]
This is a follow-up to the article “What is a Family?” This follow-up asks whether the Bible presents a preferred pattern of family. Discussing Mat 19:3ff; Mk 10:2ff; Gen 1:27,28; 2:18-24; Colossians 3:18-21; Ephesians 5:21-6:4 and 1 Timothy 3:1-4 (cf Titus 1:6) as possible biblical bases for a model of “family”. Part of the discussion [...]
