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  We go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong Remembered forever As shoo-bop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom ~Grease the Musical While I have no idea what it means to go together like “rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong,” there are certain people in history that are so closely associated that you can hardly think of one without thinking of the other. In the NFL, one might think of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice almost like a single person. If you are a fan of classic movies, hearing the name Ginger Rogers almost certainly brings to mind Fred Astaire.   In music, it is hard to say Darrel Hall without adding John Oates. They are connected in our collective minds. Thinking Biblically, there are similar groupings of people whose names flow off the tongue like they were meant to be together: David and Jonathan, Samson and Delilah, Cain and Abel (for bad reasons), Jacob and Esau, and on and on. One significant pair in the Bible from the period of the two kingdoms...

I love science. And I love the way that it works to provide evidence for the truth of the Bible. A few years ago (15, actually -- dang, have I been doing this that long?), I wrote a blogpost entitled Ketef Hinnom: The Most Important OT Discovery in 100 Years? about one of the most important finds in Biblical Archaeology: the Ketef Hinnom Silver Scrolls. These tiny scrolls were discovered in 1979 in a tomb in the Hinnom Valley. The scrolls have been described in an article on WatchJerusalem entitled Ketef Hinnom Scrolls: A look at the oldest biblical texts ever discovered , as follows: These scrolls were among a collection of over 1,000 objects found in a tomb on the edge of the Hinnom Valley, southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem. Made of 99 percent pure silver, one scroll measures 3.8 inches high by 1 inch wide when unrolled; the second measures only 1.5 by 0.4 inches. Professor [Gabriel] Barkay[, the scholar who discovered the scrolls,] stated these scrolls were probably worn a...

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; there is no one who does good. Psalm 53:1 - The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God,” They are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice; There is no one who does good. In my last two posts, I have looked at the question of whether Christians have weaponized Psalms 14:1 and 53:1 (they have) but whether the Biblical concept of fool means stupid or silly (it doesn’t). But now I want to turn to the remainder of these two verses because the verses add additional information that Mr. Cline found objectionable in his article, Myth - Atheists Are Fools Who Say "There Is No God": Are Atheists Foolish? Are Atheists Corrupt? Do Atheists Do No Good? Mr. Cline kicks up a great deal of dust over the fact that Christians only like to quote the first part of Psalm 14:1 but not the remainder. Mr. Cline writes, Calling someone a fool simply because they don...

Psalm 53:1 - The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God,” They are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice; There is no one who does good. The Hebrew word translated as fool in Psalm 14:1 and 53:1 There is more than one word translated as fool in the Old Testament. The word used in Proverbs 1:7, for example, is the Hebrew word ‘eviyl (and while I don’t see that it is in the etymology of the English word “evil,” the similarity is appropriate, as we shall see). According to Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon (Gesenius) , the Hebrew word ‘eviyl relates to opposition to wisdom and importantly includes the notion of impiety, i.e., lack of reverence; especially for God. But the word used in Psalm 14:1 and 53:1 is a different word which communicates a lot about what the two Psalms are communicating. The Hebrew word used in these two Psalms is “נָבָל” ( nabal ). While the primary definition of nabal is “stupid, foolish” according to the Gesenius , the word is more o...

Psalm 14:1: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. Last time , I wrote about the inappropriate weaponization of the phrase “The fool has said in his heart ‘There is no God.’” This phrase can be found in Psalm 14:1 and again in Psalm 53:1. Too many Christians use the word “fool” as a pejorative consistent with the current dictionary definition which defines “fool” as being “stupid” or “silly,” and apparently non-believers understand it in that context as well. While the Hebrew words translated as “fool” or “foolish” do not mean “silly” or “stupid,” they are not complimentary. In Old Testament times as today, being foolish is not something to be embraced. That, however, is not the way that the Bible uses the word “fool” in these two Psalms. In this post, I will focus on the broad usage of the term, and in the next I will focus on the Biblical word translated “fool” in both Psalms. Foolishness as the ant...

Does God say only fools do not Believe in Him? The last time I wrote, I closed out my post with the following: The Bible is a book filled with deep meaning on many levels, and in all sincerity I have grown rather weary of sparring with Atheists over the Bible when they are reading it like it has no more depth than Harold and his Purple Crayon . But what else should I expect from those who the Bible rightfully calls fools (and not in the shallow sense that most Atheists take that to mean)? For those unfamiliar with that reference, the Biblical passage I paraphrased was from Psalm 14 which states in the opening verse: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good. So, what do I mean when I say that most atheists don’t take that verse in the sense that it was meant to be taken? On its face, it seems pretty apparent – only fools believe that there is no God. It is my contention that the prior sentence I just...

Peter Kreeft once remarked words to the effect that the only thing required to believe any one of the 100 most absurd things that any human being can believe is to have a Ph.D. Such is the case with the recently publicized beliefs of Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou of the University of Exeter who argues that God had a wife who was edited out of the Bible. According to God had a wife but edited out in Bible, says British theologian , Dr. Stavrakopoulou believes that the goddess Asherah, who is mentioned in several places in the Old testament, was not some competing false god, but was the wife of the biblical god Yahweh. While I realize a brief article in a newspaper is not going to contain the complete argument, the news source generally gives at least one argument that supports the thesis. Such is the case here, and the argument cited if representative of the good doctor's theory is not particularly good. Here's the argument: After noting that there were competing gods to the God ...

The Bible is a book that proponents claim is history but which many detractors claim is the creation of story-tellers. The New Testament, which is the 27 most recently written of the Bible's 66 books, has a well-attested historical backdrop in which its accounts take place. Certain historical findings -- such as the finding of the tomb of Caiphas and the Pool of Siloam -- have added credence to the Christian contention that the authors of the New Testament documents were accurate in their description of people and places. The 39 books of the Old Testament, however, stretch back into times that historians and archaeologists know little about and about which little archaeological evidence can be found or even expected to be found. Some skeptics suggested for a time that even King David didn't exist and that the majority of the Old Testament writings were written during the exile of the Jewish people around 500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Obviously, the older one goes ...

While commenting on the unique relevance of trinitarian theism to moral grounding elsewhere (the original thread, over at Dangerous Idea, is more of an interChristian partisan discussion about soteriology, but here it is anyway for reference sake ), I received a reply from a thoughtful commenter on a topic, any reply to which I thought would take the thread too far off-base from Victor's original intention. But it was an interesting comment, so I'm porting it here for discussion (minus the few connections back to interChristian partisan discussion {g}). Daniel Gracey, the commenter, wrote as follows: ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Hello Jason, Thanks for the helpful clarification about time not preceding God. Your post is interesting, and I will reread it and be mulling further over it. In the meantime I wanted to get your opinion about a hypothesis I haven’t yet tested thoroughly... and I’m still exploring the idea. Namely, why shouldn’t English translations h...

Archaeologists in Israel, lead by Yosef Garfinkel of Hebrew University, report finding what is perhaps the oldest Hebrew text on a pottery shard at a site near Jerusalem. The site is an ancient fortress city in the valley were David slew Goliath. The shard and text are 3,000 years old. This would by far be the oldest discovered use of the Hebrew language. There is dispute over whether the language on the shard is "proto-Cannanite" -- used by people other than the Israelis, or Hebrew. One factor that Garfkinkel finds determinative is the presence of a common verb that is typical of Hebrew but not found in any proto-Cannanite writings (of which there is a fair amount). Carbon dating places the shard in the reign of King David. The "minimalist" approach to Israeli history doubts that such a figure, or people, existed at this time. If the ceramic is Hebrew, it would be weighty evidence against this school of thought. The site is a fortress city indicative of a...

A claim that is made is that a portion of the Biblical book of Proverbs is actually copied from an Egyptian source, Amenemope. According to Introduction to the Old Testament by Georg Fohrer, Abingdon Press, 1968, p. 321: As has long been recognized, the first subsidiary collection (22:17-23:11) is closely related to the Egyptian Instruction of Amen-em-opet, which probably dates between the tenth and sixth centuries BC. The introductory poem (22:17-21) and the ten themes discussed (22:22-23:11) follow--often word for word--their Egyptian source. Even the division of this source into thirty chapters ("houses") seems to have been borrowed by the Israelite redactor for the entire collection 22:17-24:22 (cf. 22:20, where the RSV correctly reads "thirty sayings" for the Hebrew "day before yesterday" or "adjutants"). Now, Benjamin Shaw, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, has written a series of short b...

A common tactic among Jesus Mythers, and not a few liberal New Testament scholars, is to approach with suspicion any part of Jesus’ life or teaching that recalls Old Testament stories or prophecies. The theory is that the early Christian communities invented actions and teachings of Jesus to match Old Testament expectations. New Testament Similarities to the Old Testament There are many problems this approach, and especially with those who take it to the extreme to argue that Jesus himself was a mythical figure. I have pointed out these problems here and here . In the most recent post, I explained three reasons that early Christian authors would refer to historical events in ways that recalled the Old Testament. 1. Christians were given to recounting actual events in ways that reminded them of the Old Testament. Which events in an episode to highlight, what terms to use to describe those events, and how to summarize events or speeches could be used to emphasize the continuity of...