Martin and Hazel Frost Our Life in Argentina

Take a close look at the two Greek manuscripts in this post. What I want you to concentrate on is the lower right hand corner of each of these pieces of papyri. What you should notice is the fraying, deterioration, and disappearance of this part of the manuscript. Contrast this with the left hand margin [...]

E Stanley Jones was a giant when it comes to missionary work in India, but less well in our day are his wonderful writings as well which are Biblically challenging and spiritually rich. Some of you will know that it was in fact Jone’s biography of Gandhi that so influenced Martin Luther King Jr. in [...]

One of the more exciting new developments in the Protestant tradition is the writing of new tunes and new paraphrases for the Psalms. The Psalms are of course the songbook of ancient Israel, used in the Temple, which is why we have the name of tunes and even conductors from time to time in the [...]

On Friday Last I was in Charlotte to view a very small portion of the Green Collection of Biblical manuscripts, including not only old Bibles (e.g. Tyndale, KJV, Coverdale) but original OT and NT manuscripts, Qumran manuscripts, cuneiform tablets, and a host of other things (there are some 40,000 pieces to the Green Collection and [...]

John Chrysostom, one of the greatest preachers of all Christian history once said: Homileticians “should not be governed by their desires. It is impossible to acquire this power except by these two qualities: contempt of praise and the force of eloquence. If either is lacking, the one left is made useless by the divorce from [...]

Shots from the December 2012 release– ‘An Unexpected Journey’

Alert reader of this blog, Craig Beard sent me the following link which presented a precis of John Piper’s recent address at a conference on the ‘Masculinity of Christianity’. Here is the link—http://www.christianpost.com/news/john-piper-god-gave-christianity-a-masculine-feel-68385/. God and Jesus, on this showing are not in favor of women in ministry, or for that matter female images of the [...]

Here are some more helpful reflections by Larry Hurtado about orality and textuality in the NT world. BW3 —– “Orality”, “Textuality” and the Material Evidence by larryhurtado I’ve recently read a small book sent to me advocating the idea that the Gospel of Mark was the result of “oral composition”, not the product of an [...]

The period of 1927-1933 was a crucial one for the fledgling film industry in Hollywood. It was the period when films moved from the silent era (with musical accompaniment) to ‘talkies’. If you have never seen any of the restored earliest films from the silent era, you have really missed something. Start with ‘Birth of [...]

  Videos: “Jesus Among Friends and Enemies” by larryhurtado Chris Keith, whose idea the book was, talks about the recently published volume that we co-edited, Jesus Among Friends and Enemies (Baker, 2011) on some YouTube videos.  These might be useful for anyone considering the book, especially teachers considering whether/how to use it in courses: http://youtu.be/EODuAZZ4in4 (General [...]

(The following is a helpful post from Larry Hurtado) Zetzel’s Observations on Textual Transmission by larryhurtado Although alerted to the book in an essay by Michael Holmes published in 1996, I confess that it is only in the last few days that I’ve got around to it: Latin Textual Criticism in Antiquity, by James E. [...]

New Zealand Herald writes a few statements from Evangeline Lilly on her role as Tauriel, the Mirkwood warrior elf, in the Hobbit movies. “She’s actually the head of the Elven guard.  She’s the big shot in the army,” said Lilly. “So she knows how to wield any weapon, but the primary weapons that she uses [...]

I am partial to thrillers. Shoot, I write thrillers. And in the movie dead zone known as January and February ‘Haywire’ is a good thriller. It is stylish, it is subtle, and its gone in 93 minutes. No lard here. It raises the question— when is a movie star not a movie star? The answer [...]

(Here’s another helpful piece by my friend and colleague Larry Hurtado) Bousset and “Early High Christology” by larry hurtado I’m teaching a segment of our masters core course this semester, my bit focusing on the emergence of “Jesus-devotion” in earliest Christianity, and in discussions with the class and with others over recent years, Wilhelm Bousset’s [...]

Sometimes its a mistake to see a movie full of pathos right after you’ve just had your own gut-wrenching personal experience of loss of a family member. So, it was with some trepidation that I went to see the new star-studded and widely praised film with Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, a brilliant but mute Max [...]

I finally have some happy news to report. Mark Galli, senior editor at CT liked the Good Grief articles so well, that Christianity Today is turning them, plus another 35 pages of my reflections that don’t turn up on this blog, into an e-book which you can read on Kindle, and see the pictures in [...]