Preparation Day

Another interesting factoid. Looking over the number of site visits to this site by day of the week, by far, the biggest day is Friday. It has been the largest day of the week for the last month or two. I don't know if this is true for other Adventist blogs as well.

Left Behind Controversy according to CNN

CNN has an article about the violent video game. The amount of violence and hate promoted by some segments of Christianity is amazing.

How do readers stumble onto my site?

I don't know about the rest of you bloggers, but I like to check the "By Referrals" tab in sitemeter to determine how people find my blog. I've noticed that most people stumble onto here looking for information about the 3ABN scandal. I think I have only written one post onto that. The most interesting path to my blog? Somebody asked google, "How could they reject my ICASSP paper?" That is a question that I have asked myself multiple times. Actually I probably have more posts about rejected ICASSP papers than 3ABN. I wonder why I don't get more hits from those posts?

Biblical Archeology

I've read several books that said the archeological record doesn't support the Israelite invasion of Canaan as portrayed in Joshua. Most recently, I just finished reading The Bible Unearthed. It is a very engaging work with some interesting ideas. It boggles my mind that this insignificant nation produced a book that is now the world's most popular and influential. The authors claim not only was there no Exodus (or at least it didn't happen like it is portrayed in the Torah), but David was only a chieftain of a fairly small tribe and the kingdom of Judah really didn't form until shortly before the time of Josiah.

They concentrate most of their book on describing the Deuteronomist history, so while Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings are covered in depth, they don't say much about the rest of the Old Testament. Of course these are the primary historical books. (Chronicles is basically a re-hash of Kings, written from a post-exilic perspective.)

According to some, the thesis of this book is not widely accepted among archaeologists. Since I am not an archeologist and I don't know anybody who is, I am having a hard time verifying that claim. Is this a claim put out by those who believe in inerrancy only or is their enough evidence that it is supported by a wider group? Does anybody have any good books on the subject that they can recommend?

Jaroslav Pelikan

For information about the history of the church, I can't think of a better author. My first experience with his books was when I purchased Jesus Through the Centuries from a used bookstore. This was probably my earliest step towards post-modernism. It was after reading this book, that I began to realize that my interpretation of the life of Jesus was not the same as somebody who lived 300, 500, or 1500 years ago. Each generation has interpreted the incarnation in a way that spoke best for that generation.

My next encounter with Dr. Pelikan occurred during my time as a student missionary in Russia. As a side job, I agreed to help Michael Kulikov (Junior not Senior) put together the end notes a Russian translation of volume four of The Christian Tradition: a History of the Development of Doctrine.

Finally this summer, I purchased his book Whose Bible is It? It was a good book. I didn't enjoy it as much as some of his other works, but I highly recommend it. In it, you will learn how the Bible came to be the document we know today. You will learn the importance of the Bible to the printing press and the importance of the printing press to the Bible. I think the highlight of the book was his observation that during the time when critics were dissecting the human elements of the text and minimizing its significance (its only a myth), the Bible was inspiring more of humanity than ever before with its wisdom.

Unfortunately, Dr. Pelikan passed away this past May. To learn more about him, you can check out what Wikipedia has to say.

Unbelievable

I now know why many call it the World Nut Daily. World net daily is reporting that soy products cause homosexuality. This has been adequately ripped to shreds by Pharyngula. It's amazing the nonsense people believe. The article reminded me of some key scenes involving a nut ball air base commander in a certain Stanley Kubrik movie, "Dr. Strangelove."