In case you didn't notice or inadvertently dropped it from memory or ... whatever:  I'd like to remind you about the fundraiser this Sunday (August 29).  I hope you can come!  Here's the announcement: ********************* Whatever our political positions, most of us are distraught about the situation in Afghanistan.  It will almost certainly get worse.  As a result of the crisis, relief agencies there are under enormous pressure, more than in a very long time. One of the charities supported by the blog is Doctors Without Borders, one of the truly great organizations in our world.  They are staying in Afghanistan for now (and hopefully for a long time) and their hands are incredibly full.  Naturally, they are desperate for additional resources (just look them up in relation to the situation there, and you can get some reports). We will be doing a blog fund-raiser for Afghanistan relief, this Sunday.  I will be giving a lecture and we will be taking voluntary donations of any amount, in hopes of raising substantial funds.   Every donation will [...]

Whatever our political positions, most of us are distraught about the situation in Afghanistan.  It will almost certainly get worse.  As a result of the crisis, relief agencies there are under enormous pressure, more than in a very long time. One of the charities supported by the blog is Doctors Without Borders, one of the truly great organizations in our world.  They are staying in Afghanistan for now (and hopefully for a long time) and their hands are incredibly full.  Naturally, they are desperate for additional resources (just look them up in relation to the situation there, and you can get some reports). We will be doing a blog fund-raiser for Afghanistan relief, this Sunday.  I will be giving a lecture and we will be taking voluntary donations of any amount, in hopes of raising substantial funds.   Every donation will go in toto directly to Doctors without Borders. The lecture is blog-related rather than crisis-related, since that is what I know about and is also why most of you are here.   It's an intriguing topic, [...]

A NEW BLOG FEATURE! I’ve decided to try something new on the blog today.  I’d like *your* view about something, your honest opinion based on serious expertise or complete non-expertise. For this new feature, which I’m calling “What Do You Think?”, I will NOT be responding to comments/questions, I’ll simply be posting them, without making a reply, comment, question, or anything else to, so you can express yourself and have others can see your views.  (As always, I will not be posting comments that are rude to others or irrelevant to the question – for example, castigations of particular politicians that many but not all of us may despise, on one side of the political chasm facing us or the other. [!])  Others of course can comment on your comment as they choose -- and I hope they do.  I'll be listening in.  For my own fun, education, and edification! If this turns out to be a nice feature for the blog, I’ll do it again later. Here is the issue that I would like [...]

I regularly get comments on one of my posts from a member who is having some kind of technical problem -- for example, only part of the post shows up for them, or they can't seem to access something etc.  (Other people have problems with what I actually *say*, but that's a different matter....).   Sometimes there are indeed technological problems that arise.  What to do? The VERY BEST thing is to contact our help staff.  I won't get to your comment a day or so later, and the problem is almost always individual, not system wide.  So there's not much I can do to help in response to a comment, even if I did have the wherewithall to deal with the technological details.  (As Groucho once said, Why a four-year-old child could understand this ...! Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can't make head or tail of it.”) So, are you haveing a problem? Click on HELP and contact support.  Someone will get in touch and figure it out for you. If there are even [...]

Are you interested in joining a Blog Book Club (the BBC)?  We’re going to give one a try!  This will function as a fund-raiser for the blog.  This first BBC will involve three meetings over the course of three weeks, discussing one of my books and a published (unfavorable!) response to it. I will be joining participants in the third meeting for a Q&A about it all. The first week all participants will read and discuss my book Misquoting Jesus.  This is my best-selling book and probably my most controversial (which has always struck me as odd, since to my knowledge there isn’t any factual misinformation in it!)  There were five books written to counter  it! The second week participants will read and discuss one of the counter-books, Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, by Timothy Paul Jones. The third week everyone will join a Q & A, as we discuss the matter among ourselves, with questions from you and attempts to answer them from me. How’s it sound?  [...]

Are you on the blog?  Do you live in the U.K.?   Well lucky you!   A group of blog members who came to a London Blog Dinner last month have decided to host a UK Zoom meeting among themselves, to discuss topics of mutual interest.  For and by Brit Bloggers!  It is scheduled for Tuesday, Aug 10, 2021, 8:00 pm (London time). The organizer is Angus Nisbet.  If you need additional information, you can reach him here:  [email protected] Below are the topics and the Zoom link to join.   English members only please.   Enjoy! Topics for discussion Should we throw the Bible out with the bathwater? Revelation Heaven & Hell Jesus - a failed apocalypticist? Zoom Details: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86859219342?pwd=SHlyMnBDNlV5MTFZNnIzQjhXenBJUT09 Meeting ID: 868 5921 9342 Passcode: 605295   ******************************************************************************************************************** This message may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient please inform the sender that you have received the message in error before deleting it. Please do not disclose, copy or distribute information in this e-mail or take any action in relation to its contents. To do [...]

I am very pleased to announce that the book of my former student, Jason Staples, The Idea of Israel in Second-Temple Judaism, has just appeared from Cambridge University Press.  Jason did his PhD here at UNC and this is part of his dissertation.  I say "part" because the dissertation was large, and he has divided it into two separate monographs; the second will be dealing with how the term "Israel" is used in the writings of Paul -- in particular, what Paul might mean when he says "All Israel will be saved" (Rom. 11:26) -- an unusually thorny statement that has generated a huge amount of research and opinion over the years (all the usual and fairly commonsense explanations are problematic, for one compelling reason or another).  Jason thinks he has found the solution.  That will be volume 2! Here he presents for us one of the issues he address in vol. 1, related to the overall topic of the book.  Short question: what is the difference in the ancient world between talking about "Israel" [...]

A lot of terrific comments have come in on James Tabor's posts on Revelation.  I'm afraid we've been having technical difficulties on the blog in making it possible for him to reply to them.  But we think we have it worked out now (long story; I won't bore you with it).   So hopefully responses will be coming.  He will not be able to reply to all of the comments, but will take on some, and we will make sure that all of them, whether replied to or not, are published!  Thanks for your patience.   The difficulty is about to be resolved.  It is "coming soon"!

Two months ago I did a three-part lecture series on Zoom as a fundraiser to help defray the expenses of the blog.  I recorded the lectures and have now decided to make them available -- still as a fundraiser -- to anyone who would wants to hear them.  For details how to get access to them, see further below. The lectures all discussed stories involving Jesus that are not widely known to the world at large.  Or to *Christians* at large.  Or to *Blog Members* at large.   I'm pretty sure you didn't hear *these* growing up....  Want to hear them?  These  are the titles and topics:   Lecture One.  Jesus and the Other Divine Men Jesus may be the only miracle-working Son of God people know about today, but in antiquity there were others – “Divine men” who were miraculously born, who could do miracles, and then, at the end of life, ascended to heaven to live with the gods.  How could anyone think such things of mere mortals?  And is there anything that makes [...]

In this post I would like to address some questions I have received about blog “comments” and in so doing reaffirm the blog’s policies and procedures. As all of you know, blog members at the Silver, Gold, or Platinum level are allowed to make comments on posts and respond to comments of others.  The limit is 200 words for a comment and only two per day are allowed.  These limits are designed to help commenters keep their remarks direct and on point, and to make the entire enterprise manageable for the one person who manages them (yours truly). A lot of the comments the posts invoke involve a question for me and I try to respond to each and every one.   Since we began the blog in 2012 we have had over 112,000 comments and I have written some 37,000 responses.  Ouch. Most of the time, commenters give a remark or reflection on a particular post.  You can ALWAYS do so on an old post, no problem.  I’ll post it/answer it no matter how old [...]