I just read this morning a brief notice that an Illinois Corrections Department uses a Bible-based job skills program to help released inmates find and maintain jobs. It’s so successful that they’re expanding it. Hey, I’m happy for them — sounds like a great goal, and kudos for achieving it! But I’m confused. What exactly …
The storied “sea” (actually a freshwater lake) where Jesus performed miracles among its fisher-folk and from which Jesus called his disciples to become “fishers of men” is now off limits. Galilean fish stocks are so depleted that Israel has instituted a ban on fishing there, in effect for two years, in the hopes that that piscis population …
Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court got me thinking about Jewish traditions of justice, at least as the Bible suggests and reflects. Near as I can tell, it bodes well for the work she’d be doing. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that justice is a major preoccupation of the Hebrew Bible …
Our neighbors across the Atlantic are typically less Bible-happy in political discourse than we in the States. So Gordon Brown made news by (mis)quoting the Good Book recently. The British Prime Minister, facing attacks from political rivals, asked his church audience to recall “the great story of Micah in the Gospel.” But Micah is an Old Testament, …
The biblical book of Revelation (the last one in the Christian canon) is full of wild imagery and evocative symbolism. It lends itself well to interpretation, reinterpretation, and application in all sorts of times and places. I begin BIBLE BABEL with reference to concerns aired in Florida some months ago about inserting microchips in animals. The …
Ready. Aim. Read some Bible. Fire. Huh? I don’t think of New Zealanders as particulary given to compunction, maybe occasionally irascible, but mostly as an easy-going, live and and let live sort of folk. I mean, when your human population is outnumbered by sheep… Yet protest they did, complaining that there was something wrong with the guns …
I happen to agree with Thomas Jefferson’s assertion that “the Bible is the cornerstone of liberty…students’ perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands,” but I doubt I’ve taken the same logic to arrive at that conclusion… or maybe even mean the same thing by it. (Oh, and one obvious caveat: I …
Work is underway on a new translation of the King James Version designed to correct what its authors call a “liberal bias” in modern translations. Conservapedia, which claims to be “the trustworthy encyclopedia,” has determined to correct what it sees as “three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning are, in increasing amount: lack of precision in the original …
On the NBC sitcom, “30 Rock,” the optimistic, smile-y, and just plain aw-so-cute character Kenneth the Page declared, “science was my most favorite subject, especially the Old Testament.” It’s a hilarious poke in fun at a serious debate raging today — Should the Bible’s narratives about creation inform ideas about the earth’s origins? Or: If a person …
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what’s a picture with words worth? GQ recently published eleven cover pages from ealier Pentagon intelligence briefings. That they juxtapose biblical quotations with Iraq war photos has elicited all sorts of righteous indignation. Predictably, many people are outraged that Rumsfeld and Bush would blithely endorse equating …
