Two Visions of Jesus

Lisa and I are reading The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions together, which is a conversation, really, between Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright.  I first read the book several years back, and it was actually my first introduction to both authors; we thought this would be a good way to pick through some of the [...]

The Misunderstood Jew

Just finished the The Misunderstood Jew by Amy-Jill Levine. Levine is a Jew (raised as a Jew), who grew up in a predominantly Protestant area, and, ironically, is the Rhodes & Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt. The book is an assessment of Jesus in his Jewish context, and the multiple [...]

Three Gospels

Just finished Reynolds Price’s Three Gospels.  At first glance, I thought it was going to be about the three synoptic gospels, but, interestingly it wasn’t.  Instead he presents his own translation of Mark and John, each with a preamble.  His translations are simple and plain – he is not a Greek scholar – but has [...]

Music Psychology

One of the other benefits of the hiking trip was the plane rides, and getting to read a book. I got through Dan Levitin’s new book, “This Is Your Brain On Music.” I got to meet him once in grad school (we were both presenting on the same session of a conference) – [...]

The Language of God, Darwin’s God, and Genesis Questions

Two recent brief book reviews, and a old third one that is related:
If you’ve heard the name Francis Collins before, it was probably in association withe the Human Genome Project, which he is the head of. He has come out with a recent book titled, “The Language of God“. I first heard of [...]

The Math Instinct

Just finished The Math Instinct, by Keith Devlin. It’s an arm chair book about appreciating the plethora of examples of math in the animal kingdom (including humans). While it was pretty neat learning about the amazing things that various animals can do with innate mathematical abilities, the most interesting thing was his discussion [...]