This year, Santa brought me @jrdkirk.bsky.social’s “A Man Attested By God”, which I’m enjoying immensely. Kirk articulates a paradigm I think was taught in my church community as “God manifestation”. It’s nice to have a solid academic treatment of this to chew over. Definitely #forbiblenerds.
Finally getting around to this, just the sort of thing for the beach on a sunny day 🏖️ Reads clear and concise, feels more like a honed explanation than others in the series. May post some quotes later.
New Explorations in Genesis 1, by John Walton…
Honestly forgot I’d preordered this, apparently it’s shipping! It was an insta-buy as the latest in the series, so I had no particular expectations. Format appears to be FAQs grouped by topic; you prob have to read the original first : ) #forbiblenerds
Either way, maybe just focus on making everything better for our fellow humans, even if sometimes that is something that causes us loss. As David noted, sacrifice is supposed to cost us something.
Is that because the former days are never as great as we remember? Or that present circumstances are always sufficiently different from the past that we always have to face them afresh? Perhaps it’s more philosophical discouragement of enslaving of our agency to the past.
Every time I hear about making things great again (this time through tariffs, apparently) I can’t help but think of Ecc 7:10:
“Do not say,’Why were the former days better than these?’ For you do not inquire wisely concerning this.”
#forbiblenerds - on preorder on Amazon in the UK, release date of the 29th April. Catch the background on the Bible For Normal People podcast, episode 293 with @savannahlocke.bsky.social and @bethallisonbarr.bsky.social. Looking forward to this one.
Reading the prophetic and apocalyptic literature in the Bible as if they predicted “tomorrow’s news today” is a gross failure of genre recognition, which has let to fanciful ideas such as an alliance of English-speaking nations against Russia, an idea looking quite fanciful. /1
Well, to his credit, Huff has posted that he said some things which people have pointed out are wrong, and he’s going to do a response video to himself. So, maybe some light at the end of the apologetics tunnel ; )
I subbed to Hoff a few months ago after he did a good (critical) job of reviewing extant NT manuscripts and myths. I’ve been disappointed with some of his content though; even I could tell he was overstating his case in certain areas. Then on Rogan he did the same. Hope he learns from it.
#forbiblenerds, sub to the feed here if you’re interested in Bible adjacent publications with an academic focus.
bsky.app/profile/layc...
A book #forbiblenerds to enjoy.
Interesting comparison of post engagement across social media platforms: tl;dr? X trending down, BlueSky trending up, not *quite* passed each other. Also X is a troll-fest.
I did not know this, and I am grateful for it being brought to my attention.
Me too! I’ve been collating semi-personal notes on this as an unfinished “hermeneutics” project www.laychristian.com/hermeneutics (Christian perspective). Realised I’d gone down a rabbit hole and made assumptions about where authority is; that’s where I now find the interesting conversations.
Realised that my literary diet has been formed of quite dry academic papers of late. This book by @johnhendrix.bsky.social has been a poignant read and visual delight over the Christmas break, and encouraged me to suggest better (i.e., more esoteric) names for the niche communities I start/join.
Welcome along @biblefeed.bsky.social, good to see you in the sky 😎 I’ve added you to my starter pack (go.bsky.app/T6BCfgN), daresay there will be a few names you recognise in here.
Too many!
You know the algorithm is working when the memes it shows you are a) funny and b) sum up the headache of Biblical authority and interpretation for Lay Christian communities.
Woken up by my wife this Sunday morning to discuss the ethics of cancelling house church because our village has a power cut (it’s a Sunday School prize-giving and we’re hosting) Today’s ecclesiastical quandary was brought to you by Storm Darragh 🥱
Looks like something #forbiblenerds to add to their Xmas lists.
An unusual topic #forbiblenerds: the contemporary application of apocalypse. Use code 15PRE for a discount on this revised edition.
Well, I for one welcome our new psychoanalysing AI overlords.
blueskyroast.com/roast/laychr...
So here’s the thing…even IF there wasn’t a parable *explicitly* undermining this narrow idea of neighbor, Jesus also said “love your enemies.” There’s simply no escaping the fact that Jesus calls us to radically expand our concepts of love and hospitality.
…and now the next round in our pub quiz: “Is this about Trump, or Constantine?”,
What do you mean by “we could use a Python package to collate”? I’m in tech, just interested as to whether there are interpretation-adjacent open source packages I could contribute to.
Hooray! Welcome along! I’ve got a feed in my profile based on the #forbiblenerds tag if you want to promo any books/publications.
Picked up a few good follows from this list.
Blocked. That’s… weird of them.