You’ve heard of fake news? (Who hasn’t?) How about some fake exegesis? Some time ago I blogged about the nonsensical idea that the Hebrew particle את has an amazing hidden meaning in Gen 1:1 (that’s an aleph and taw, read right-to-left, for those who...
Bunkagesis Award
Contact in the Desert Conference: Conclave of the Bizarre
Rob Sheaffer over at the Bad UFO blog offers a whimsical (and in places, disturbing) description of the goings-on at the “alternative knowledge” conference held this past August at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center. Every UFO conference is a mixture of...
Josephus Code Follies
I’ve gotten a half dozen emails about the new (it’s not really new) Joseph Atwill book and “Covert Christianity” PR launch (er . . . conference). The big media event is really about Atwill’s rehashing of his material in a 2006 book called...
The Harbinger: Ode to Biblical Illiteracy
I’ve been asked by a couple of readers if I’d read the best-selling book by Jonathan Cahn, The Harbinger. It reminded me of a day back in an apologetics class that I took with Norm Geisler. An enthused student asked Geisler when he came into the room...
Baghdad Battery, the Saqqara Plane, and Other Not-So-Mysterious Artifacts
I just discovered the Archaeological Fantasies blog, a site that warmed my PaleoBabbling heart. The author has a short series entitled, “The 10 Most Not-So-Puzzling Ancient Artifacts” in which many of you will be interested. Two caught my eye right away:...
Naked Bible Survey Updates
Just wanted to give readers a brief update on the Naked Bible’s two running surveys. Back in October I opened the competition to the first annual Harold Camping Bunkagesis award. With only a couple weeks to go to the deadline, Harold is running away with his...
2011 Harold Camping Bunkagesis Award — Voting Begins
In a stunning turn of events, Harold Camping got the end of the world wrong again. Go figure. But his nonsense will not be wasted. As promised, it’s time to open voting for the first annual Harold Camping Bunkagesis Award. Just follow this link below to vote for...
Introducing the Harold Camping Annual Bunkagesis Award
The votes are all in, and by a very narrow margin (3 votes), “bunkagesis” has been selected as the term of choice for recognizing egregiously awful examples of handling Scripture. I can’t think of a better way to say “please put the Bible down...
Camping Crackpottery Survey Update
Contest voting is pretty tight, as the graphic shows. No sign of a clear consensus yet, so I’ll be leaving the survey live for a while yet. Not sure if Harold Camping’s latest nugget of incoherence will sway voters, either. In case you haven’t heard...
Harold Camping, Bible Crackpottery, and a Contest
In honor of today’s blazingly stupid (and failed) rapture prediction by Harold Camping, I thought I’d coin a new term to use for Bible crackpottery. I can’t decide between two alternatives. I was actually hoping he’d be right since I’ve...