Words like "exegesis" and "exegetical" are thrown around by biblical scholars all the time. Those not in the guild or who haven't taken courses in biblical languages or hermeneutics might wonder what the terminology means. If that's you, I recommend reading this post...
textual criticism
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 028: The Comedic Genre and the New Testament
This episode of the Naked Bible podcast features Dr. Heiser's interview with his friend Dr. Sam Lamerson about the use of the comedic genre in the New Testament. Dr. Lamerson is Professor of New Testament at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He has a...
More Online Resources for Vaccination Against PaleoBabble
There's been a spate of resources that have popped up online in recent days for excellent resources to study the ancient world. Some of these resources have been around a while, but have gotten some recent attention and traffic on various blogs and news sites. Here...
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 027: What is a Proverb?
In the last podcast episode we continued our series on studying the Bible in light of its various types of literature its literary genres. We looked at parables and offered some guidelines for interpreting them. In this episode, we're going to briefly look at...
Divorcing Jesus’ Wife
This figures to be my last update on this, at least until after November's academic conferences. I'm bored with it. Here's some item updates on the alleged (but now suspected by many to be fake) fragment that has Jesus referring to his wife. (In case you're late to...
Naked Bible Episode 026: Advice for Interpreting Parables
In the last podcast episode I continued the series on studying the Bible in light of its various types of literature its literary genres. I looked at an example related to the New Testament how the literary features of Greco-Roman phantom tales and post-mortem...
Survey on “What Troubles You About Inspiration?” And a Rant
Thanks to all of you (nearly 50) who responded to my survey. It's still open so that others can chime in. I'll be using these thoughts as fodder for my trip to Nashville this week, as its goal is to experiment with creating some content / teaching videos for YouTube....
Study Your Bible; Don’t Read it to Forget It: Naked Bible Podcast Series
That's the theme of the podcast series I started several weeks ago. Most people either simply read the Bible like a cereal box, with no intent to analyze it, or like a textbook, which is sure to kill off curiosity. I began the series talking about how critical it is...
Modern Critical Thinking About the Bible? Or, Should 2 Timothy 2:15 Be Restricted to Ancient Readers?
A recent guest post over at the Patheos blog author by Dr. David Lincicum, will likely be of interest to Naked Bible readers: Lament for a Maternal Home (or, Is There No Place for Believing Criticism in Evangelicalism?). I appreciated the essay. Though I don't know...
Bart Ehrman vs. the Son of God in Mark 1:1 – A Response
I've posted on Bart Ehrman and his work several times before on this blog (e.g., here and here). My contention with Bart is that he's a fundamentalist -- someone who is unwilling to process an issue in any other way than the black-and-white, either-or fallacy that he...
Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Online
Pretty cool - high resolution images of several of the most important scrolls are now online for free viewing / reading as part of the The Digital Dead Seas Scrolls project.
Update on the Lead Codices Fakery
Dan McClellan has posted several recent pieces on the Jordanian lead codices that are highly recommended. Other than his collection of photos (very cool), he focuses on analysis. For insights into the fabrication of the artistic work on the codices, this analysis is a...
Syriac E-Sources
If there are any out there who like Syriac, this is pretty cool. I'm actually not one of them. I actually suggested that it be removed from my graduate program in favor of Akkadian and more Ugaritic. The reason is that languages and literature pre-dating or...
Dan McClellen's Response to Yours Truly, and My Rejoinder Points
Hope you all aren't getting bored with this. For those interested, Dan McClellan has posted a response on his blog to my thoughts on his SBL paper of last year. You can all go read it in full. I'm taking a few moments here to add "rejoinder thoughts" to his most...
Which Bible Translation? A Few Thoughts
I frequently get asked about what Bible translation I recommend. In fact, I get asked so frequently that I thought I'd briefly post on it. The first thing I usually say is that the best Bible translation is the one you'll read faithfully. I am far more concerned with...