Recently we posted a link to an episode from Justin Brierly’s Unbelievable? show on the UK station Premier Christian Radio which featured a podcast of Paul Copan and Norman Bacrac discussing Is God a Moral Monster? Yesterday we were alerted to the fact that at the end of the Unbelievable? episode of 23 Apr 2011, “Rob Bell […]
Entries Tagged as 'Hermeneutics'
Madeleine on Unbelievable?
May 5th, 2011 7 Comments
Tags: Canaanites · Christian Premier Radio · Hermeneutics · Justin Brierley · MP3 · Norman Bacrac · Paul Copan · Podcast · Unbelievable?
Moving Beyond Sunday School
April 19th, 2011 9 Comments
On this blog we often rail against new-atheist readings of Biblical texts. Our pages are littered with expositions as to what a text is really saying when you consider the context, genre and textual evidence, all of which demonstrates that the new-atheist readings of the texts are at best wanting and at worst down-right stupid […]
Tags: Hermeneutics · Paul Copan
Thom Stark on Wolterstorff and Hagiographic Hyperbole
April 7th, 2011 36 Comments
Earlier this year I finished a forthcoming article in which I defended Nicholas Wolterstorff’s take on the Canaanite massacre recorded in the book of Joshua. Wolterstorff argues that the Book of Joshua is a highly figurative, hagiographic and hyperbolic account of Israel’s early skirmishes and it is not intended to be taken literally in its details.[1] […]
Tags: Canaanites · Douglas S. Earl · Genocide · Hermeneutics · Joshua · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Old Testament Ethics · Thom Stark
Contra Mundum: “Till Death do us Part” Christ’s Teachings on Abuse, Divorce and Remarriage
February 28th, 2011 46 Comments
Anne was clearly angry. She relayed how her former husband had been abusive, had beaten her and sexually violated her. Despite this, however, he had never – as far as she knew – had an affair. Did this mean she had sinned before God for leaving her marriage? Was she now required to remain celibate […]
Tags: Adultery · David Instone Brewer · Divorce · Hermeneutics · Marriage · Remarriage · Spousal Abuse
Contra Mundum: Is God a 21st Century Western Liberal?
February 1st, 2011 15 Comments
On 11 September 2001 Islamic terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Centre killing thousands of innocent people. Ostensibly they did this because they believed God commanded them to do so. This event has invigorated a fear latent in the Western psyche since the 17th century when wars of religion tore Europe apart, the […]
Tags: 9/11 · Contra Mundum · God and Morality · Hermeneutics · J J Finkelstein · Raymond Bradley · Raymond Westbrook · Robert Adams · World Trade Centre
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part III: Two Implications of the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Account
January 16th, 2011 21 Comments
This three-part blog series is a modified version of what I presented to the Evangelical Philosophical Society meeting in November 2010. In a recent Conference at Notre Dame Alvin Plantinga suggested that the commands to wipe out the Canaanites, recorded in the book of Deuteronomy, might be hyperbolic; they should be understood more like how […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Canaanites · Christopher J H Wright · Genocide · Gordon Wenham · Hagiography · Hermeneutics · Hyperbole · J McConville · J P U Lilley · Joshua · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Old Testament Ethics · Paul Copan
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II: Ancient Near Eastern Conquest Accounts
January 10th, 2011 14 Comments
This three-part blog series is a modified version of what I presented to the Evangelical Philosophical Society meeting in November 2010. In my previous post, God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation, I expounded and adapted Nicholas Wolterstorff’s argument for a hagiographic hyperbolic reading of the book […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Canaanites · Genocide · Hagiography · Hermeneutics · Hyperbole · J Van Seters · James K. Hoffmeier · John Goldingay · Joshua · K Lawson Younger · Kenneth Kitchen · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Old Testament Ethics · Richard Hess · Thomas Thompson · Ziony Zevit
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
