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 [...]

Sanders: Historical Jesus

I first posted on Sanders’ book, The Historical Figure of Jesus here, but it’s a dust-jacket review.  Here, I’d like to begin a more thorough and proper review.  The reason that I’m starting with Sanders is because he gives, I think, a good jumping point to look at the biblical issues I’m exploring.  Even though [...]

The Quest for the Historical Jesus

I’m reading Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels. I first encountered him in an interview with Kritsa Tippett on The Da Vinci Code (debunking – no surprise – Brown’s work; Bart Ehrmann also puts that nonsense to rest in this book; [...]

Oops and a Thought Experiment

An interesting case study of evolution in “real time” (that’s the oops).  This is one of several examples that demonstrates the challenge of studying evolution, and highlights a good question my father-in-law asked me recently: How do you study evolution when you can’t observe it?  I’m paraphrasing, but I interpreted and answered his question along [...]

Saving Darwin

Karl Giberson’s book Saving Darwin, How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution is outstanding.  In keeping with Collins’ and Millers’ books that act as a corrective (by Christians) to intelligent design from a technical standpoint, Giberson’s book is a cultural corrective.

Jesus, a Rabbi, and Harvard

No, it’s not the start of a corny joke; just finished two books: A Rabbi Talks With Jesus, by Jacob Neusner, and When Jesus Came To Harvard, by Harvey Cox. 

WWJD?

In my last post, I alluded to a problem with the what-would-Jesus-do approach to ethics, and it needs to be elaborated on, otherwise my statement would just sound cynical. Jesus did not face every possible situation other people, cultures, and times would face, and his life, words, and actions cannot be distilled to a [...]

Current reads and a couple conclusions

I recently finished Marcus Borg’s Jesus, which I just commented on mid-read a couple posts ago. I’ve read a good deal of Borg now, and the more I read him, the more I find myself relating to his perspective. It’s not 100%, but he captures the vector I find myself moving along. [...]

Jesus’ teaching style

I’m reading through Marcus Borg’s book “Jesus”, and he has made the point a couple times that I found interesting (and hadn’t thought of in exactly this way): Jesus would have told his parables multiple times – they were too good to just use once.
That implied that the ones we have recorded are one [...]

The Net Effect

As I contemplated my last two posts, I thought about the net effect of voting.  On the one hand, I don’t believe that my one vote, per se, made a difference; the people who had a more direct effect were campaign volunteers – I’m not looking at that.  I’m considering the net effect for myself, [...]