As the first book in the Bible Genesis has a special importance for readers. This very brief introduction to some of the literary and theological issues of the book is really just the very beginning of studying Genesis! I’ve been working on a Bible Dictionary article on “Genesis” , so it seemed like a good [&hellip...
Thalia invited me to do a series of (by my standards) longish posts over at Sacraparental. They introduce briefly some of the key ideas from my book Not Only a Father. The first has just appeared: What’s Wrong with this Picture? This is a podcast of that material. Talking in pictures is necessary when we [&hellip...
In a post Why the Bible is just not (so) funny David returned to a theme he’s argued before, that the Bible is not funny. Aparently back in 2007 he issued a challenge that readers of his blog could not give examples of humour from every book in the Bible: Funny Stuff in the Bible. [&hellip...
Often in biblical narrative things “just seem to happen”, rather like they do in our lives 😉 But are such “happenings” chance or divine providence at work? We’ll try to decide, using Gen 37:12ff. (read with Gen 39) and Ruth 2 as examples. ...
Bonhoeffer has some hugely stimulating ideas in his discussion of the “fall” story in Genesis 3. Probably none are more stimulating, or easy to fail to grasp as his thought about “conscience” – at least difficult for people for whom the idea that conscience is the “voice of God within” is deeply embedded, since Bonhoeffer [&hellip...
Here’s what I would have said if they had asked me about the Bible! (Not 5 minutes but 6, but it is a big topic 😉 and here are the usual downloadable links 🙂 ...
In this post I’ll start looking at how we respond to the Bible’s silences, often there are questions we want to ask the Bible, which the Bible does not answer. What do we do then? Some of these questions, like the one I start with produce classic biblical puzzlers… By the way, if the sound [&hellip...
I’ve been marking student assignments for a course on Genesis. The more I mark the more I become aware of the issue of the intended (expected/implied) audience. In this podcast I’ll suggest that the answer is not as simple as it sounds 😉 and draw a conclusion about our practices of reading Scripture&#...
Since I am teaching Genesis again I am filling out the gaps in my podcasts on this book. I think it is important to notice that Genesis is told to us by (at least) two narrators. The story comes to us as an edited text, that is it already in its telling belongs, not to [&hellip...
In a post Why the Bible is just not (so) funny David returned to a theme he’s argued before, that the Bible is not funny. Aparently back in 2007 he issued a challenge that readers of his blog could not give examples of humour from every book in the Bible: Funny Stuff in the Bible. [&hellip...
