Over at the New York Times 6th Floor Blog, there is a short post discussing the author Walter Kirn’s essay about reading the marginalia in his mother’s bible. Without a subscription to Byliner—any of you Holey Books readers out there … Continue reading
The Book of Judges, the next book in the Old Testament that we will examine, has nothing to do with judges—unlike some of the other books we have looked at before, which seem to describe, broadly, their contents (Genesis and … Continue reading
It’s the last day of the year. Seems like an appropriate time to share a little bit of data we’ve collected. Here are the five most visited posts in 2012: The Top 5 Most Ridiculous Things in Leviticus The Top … Continue reading
After more than a few boring verses, the Book of Joshua returns to interesting territory (so this blogger thinks) in chapter 23. There, Joshua, who is by now nearing the end of his life, exhorts the Israelites, and presses them, … Continue reading
While we have written several posts about Joshua, the book, as far as the parts read and remembered, is top-heavy: the rest is, well, not terribly narratively interesting (some parts of the Bible, as anyone knows who has read it … Continue reading
Good news for those of us (i.e., us at Holey Books) who use the excellent online Bible site BibleGateway: the site now has the Newly Revised Standard Version (NRSV) online. While most anyone who is serious about analyzing the Bible … Continue reading
Prayer, among the faithful, is a powerful tool. It’s often used for thanking/praising God and for asking for God’s assistance in Life. As we’ve already seen, Joshua asks God for (and receives) some major assistance in the Battle of Gibeon … Continue reading
Shortly after their victory at Jericho—which likely never happened—the Israelites, according to the Book of Joshua, are facing some military setbacks (Josh. 7). Naturally, the cause of these new problems is related to the reason for their prior victory: following … Continue reading
From time to time the Bible makes some interesting claims about how the cosmos works. There are the creation stories, the great flood, and frogs falling from the sky, but the one that I find truly amusing is found in … Continue reading
A previous post on this site criticized a post by Rachel Held Evans, who didn’t apply much rigor to her thinking about the variance of Biblical interpretations. Interestingly enough, perhaps she was too busy following many pointless details—Evans decided to … Continue reading
