This is the second guest post by Judy Siker, who explained in her previous post about her upbringing as a Christian in the South and then her move into the academic study of the Bible from a critical perspective.  If you recall, Judy was my student in the (very secular!) graduate program in New Testament/Early Christianity here at UNC, where she did both a Masters and PhD in the field, focusing, in her dissertation, on the socio-historical background to the Gospel of Matthew, in particular as that involved the relations of Jews and Christians in the author's community.   She then had a rich and varied teaching career in a range of schools -- private liberal arts, Catholic university, and Baptist seminary, among them! In this follow up post Judy lays out her understanding of what the Bible is (among other things, a book that asks compelling questions about matters of faith) and is not (a book that gives us all the incontrovertible answers), partly in response to comments and questions she received.  She is willing [...]

Aren't critical scholars of the NT more or less bound or driven to stop believing?  I've decided to provide two reposts on the question, since I continually get asked about it.   First: my introduction to the issue and the guest poster. ****************************** One of the questions I get asked the most frequently from blog members is how someone can possibly continue to be a believing Christian if they understand the enormous problems presented by the critical study of the New Testament.  I always tell them that in fact it’s not only possible – it happens all the time.  Sometimes they are incredulous, but it’s not only true, it’s so true that my friends who know everything I know about the Bible and are still believers often find the question / issue completely puzzling.  They have trouble understanding why anyone thinks it’s a problem.  As we learned from "Cool Hand Luke" (a great movie, btw, with tons of Christ-images), “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” I have asked my former student and long-time [...]

In my book on altruism (yet to be finished!), I'm thinking about including the following as a way to begin reflecting on the question of whether anything like "pure" altruism exists (where someone acts entirely for the sake of another with no benefit at all for the self).  Let me know your thoughts. ****************************** One might think that “altruism” is a non-problematic term.  It comes from the Latin word “alter” which means “other,"  and so refers broadly to actions that benefit someone other than oneself.  It stands in contrast with “egoism,” based on the Greek word “ego,” meaning “I” or “myself,” and therefore referring to actions that benefit oneself. That all seems simple enough: the terms differentiate between doing things for others and doing things for ourselves.  But it turns out that in practice it is difficult – possibly impossible – to establish clear boundaries between altruism and egoism.  As a result, philosophers, psychologists, and evolutionary biologists perennially debate how to understand the terms. I’ll illustrate the problem by telling a strange personal anecdote. Did [...]