Just in case you missed church this morning, here is a gospel lesson by Rowan Atkinson, a.k.a. Mr. Bean (If you offend easily, probably shouldn’t watch the video).
All complaints may be registered at The Withering Fig or NT Gateway — no surprise it originated with fellow Canadian and U of T grad and friend Zeba Crook.
I would like to thank my Mom and Dad, my wife and kids, my pet bunnies…
The always thinking Chris Heard over at Higgaion has awarded me a “Thinking Blogger Award” — even despite the fact that I occasionally resort to posting some “Best of Codex” articles from my archives during my busy seasons (he thinks that practice is, ahem, cheesy; I think it is rather clever!).
This “award” is actually more of a meme and once awarded you are supposed to nominate five others. Here are five quite different blogs that I think deserve the honour (in no particular order):
Angela Roskop Erisman of Imaginary Grace blogspot (a fairly new one which I was not aware of, but now have added it to my blogroll) has a great post on “Writing in Biblical Studies.” Here is her lead-in to an annotated bibliography:
… ultimately, writing is about communicating ideas we think are important to other people so they might change the way they think or how they live their lives. In other words, writing matters. That is, assuming we want our work to make an impact on people. Good grammar is important. So is clarity. But so are things like grace, elegance, beauty, wit, humor, suspense. Yes, even in academic writing. These elements, which we may associate more with fictional genres, are what engage our readers’ interest and make our ideas pack a lasting punch. Here I review a few works on writing that I find immensely helpful and that have changed the way I think about the task. They’ve helped me get better at making reading and learning an easier, more enjoyable experience. But, more importantly, they have and continue to help me learn to communicate ideas more effectively both to those within and outside of the discipline of biblical studies.
The post as a whole is well worth a careful read. Of the books she notes, I have read a few, though some of them have piqued my interest. Any reader of this blog knows I can improve my writing style!
(HT Hypotyposeis)
This video clip from Fox News is a pretty good summary of the discovery of Herod’s tomb (and it allows me to try out my multimedia plugin).
The missing image referred to in my previous post was linked to in the Hebrew version of the same article.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of the scroll before (right) and after (left) the part was cut out:
It appears a fairly large portion of the fragment was removed: 1 cm wide at the top and about 2 cm long. Note that no letters were removed. If this image is authentic, then the amount removed was larger than the “two small parts, one-half centimeter each” that Amir Ganor, director of the unit for the prevention of theft in the Antiquities Authority, reported.