Making sense of the Exodus
(September 12, 2021)Two books shine light on the truth (and legends) of the exodus of Moses and the Israelites from Egypt. Well worth reading.
Tag: Old Testament
Book review: coming to terms with the Old Testament
(October 1, 2020)A review of Has Archaeology Buried the Bible? by William Dever, and an assessment of how this informs a christian understanding of the Old Testament.
Worrying you can’t believe in the Old Testament any more
(September 16, 2020)A conversation about how it feels to question the Old Testament while continuing to believe in Jesus.
How evangelical doctrine and Biblical inerrancy can distort the Bible and Jesus
(August 1, 2019)Most christians have been taught to reverence the Bible. This has been especially true of Protestant christianity. The Reformation was built on the doctrine of sola scriptura (by scripture alone). And when conservative christianity felt threatened by evolution, liberal theology and modernist thinking in the 19th century, it developed a statement of “the fundamentals”, one […]
Book review: Beyond the Texts
(August 28, 2018)You can find a lot of different views on the internet about the accuracy of Old Testament history and how archaeology does, or doesn’t, support the Old Testament accounts. Minimalist historians, and internet sceptics, will tell you it’s almost all invented myth, while maximalist historians and christian apologists will tell you that archaeology supports the […]
Letting the Bible be what it is, not what we would like it to be
(June 9, 2018)I didn’t grow up in a christian family, but I was sent to Sunday School from when I was young. And so I learnt to believe that the Bible was true. It was only later, in my late teens, that I began to discover some anomalies in the Bible that didn’t fit what I had […]
Book review: Disarming Scripture
(December 14, 2017)Disarming Scripture by Derek Flood The Old Testament world was a violent place. For a christian, the most troubling violence is surely that said to be commanded by God, whether it be Abraham being commanded to sacrifice his son and heir Isaac, Joshua commanded to exterminate Canaanites who are unfortunate enough to be living in […]
Did the exodus really happen?
(September 12, 2017)The exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and their travel to the Promised Land is one of the key events in Jewish religious history, and, therefore, in christian belief as well. But did it actually happen? Did something like 2 million people cross the Red Sea and through the Sinai, aided and guided by miraculous […]
Joshua & the conquest of Canaan: what's history, what's legend, what's unknown?
(March 31, 2017)I don’t know about you, but when I read the Old Testament accounts of Joshua and the Israelites invading Canaan, I don’t have any picture of the geography or where the cities were located. The matter is complicated by the fact that many people feel a lot is at stake. Believers generally want to find […]
Does archaeology show the Bible is true? Seven facts
(March 16, 2017)I’m sure you will have read, and heard it said, that archaeology confirms the accuracy of the Bible. But you may also have heard from sceptics that the Bible isn’t historically accurate. So which is true? This is a complex matter with a wide variety of conclusions among the experts. I have tried to investigate […]