Thinking Religion 115 and Hermeneutics

Thomas is in Philadelphia this week but we still managed to sneak in a podcast episode. We start by going over the very important but often-overlooked general idea of hermeneutics and why we should take them seriously in the Age Of Trump (AOT from here on out). Then we hop into the Bible Bracket Challenge. Sorry, Ruth.

Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the concept of hermeneutics and continue their ongoing quest to decide the best book in the Bible from the Thinking Religion Bible Bracket Challenge.

via Thinking Religion Episode 115: Your Hair Is Like a Flock of Goats

This Isn’t What Jesus Had In Mind, Guys

“Chelsea and her husband Clint, who asked that I use only their first names, belong to a small subculture of religious couples who practice “Christian Domestic Discipline,” a lifestyle that calls for a wife to be completely submissive to her husband. Referred to as CDD by its followers, the practice often includes spanking and other types corporal punishments administered by husbands—and ostensibly ordained by God. While the private nature of the discipline makes it difficult to estimate the number of adherents, activity in several online forums suggests a figure in the low thousands. Devotees call CDD an alternative lifestyle and enthusiastically sing its praises; for critics, it’s nothing but domestic abuse by another name.”

Source: Spanking for Jesus: Inside the Unholy World of ‘Christian Domestic Discipline’ – The Daily Beast

Gross.

Is the Original New Testament Lost?

House of Cards is fun, but take a few mins to watch something a little more substantive this weekend (like this):

As you might expect, I argue that even though we have thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament, we do not have many *early* ones — and hardly any *really* early ones. That is why we can not (always? ever?) know with absolute certainty what the authors of the New Testament originally said. That matters for lots of reasons, one of which is that fundamentalist Christians but their faith in the very words of the Bible. But what if, in some passages, we don’t know what those words were? Dan, also as expected, argued that we have such extensive evidence for the New Testament — more than for any other book from the ancient world — we can trust that we have what the authors originally wrote.

via My Debate with Dan Wallace: Is the Original NT Lost? – Christianity in Antiquity (CIA): The Bart Ehrman Blog.