Pisteuomen - πιστευομεν - T. Michael W. Halcomb

I ran across this interesting passage in an essay I was reading today by, Tat-siong Benny Liew. The article, "Re-Mark-able Masculinities", attempted to explore Mark's definition of masculinity. At one point, Liew says this: "If Plato and Seneca criticize the masculinity of Achilles and Hercules as reckless, ruthless, or even a kind of madness, it is because dominating others may easily turn into an excuse to kill or destroy without control or to be out of control. Note that Mark’s masculinity also demands death as a proof, although it is now the death of oneself rather than that of others. The masculinity that is demonstrated and demanded by Mark’s Jesus before the parousia is partly determined by whether one is willing to endure persecution, suffering, and death." For the sake of argument, granting that this view is correct, it raises a number of questions for me, in terms of both antiquity & modernity, however, the ones that sit at the fore of my mind are:...

In the last couple of decades, D. M. Bergeron has attempted to argue that "King James", the impetus for the "King James Bible" translation had homosexual tendencies. He has published two books on this subject: Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James of England and Scotland (1991) and : King James & Letters of Homoerotic Desire (1999). This raises a number of questions for me, two being: 1) "If King James really was gay, how might this challenge the fundamentalist, King-James-Onlyists view of their Bible?" and 2) "How might this force those same people to think about homosexuality?" Furthermore, do you think they would be more willing (acting as if the premise were true) to give up a KJV-Only view first or their views towards homosexuality? Or, would it not make a difference at all if this were true? (By the way, D. Capps has written an article that seems to aptly refute the accuastions about King James! ("The Homosexual Tendencies of Ki...

As many of you know, my wife and I have been going through the adoptive process; we are adopting a child from Ethiopia. Some good news came via UPS today which said the following: Dear Adoptive Parent, Congratulations! Your dossier for Ethiopia has been reviewed and approved for the authentication step. Now it is time to send it to Washington, D.C. to be authenticated at the U.S. State Department and the Ethiopian Embassy. Of course, there was much more that the letter said but that was the opening paragraph. Anyway, it was some good news.

So, I've been on quite a hiatus from blogging over the last few weeks. It all started when the motherboard on my laptop had a meltdown. Well, now I've got the computer back and it's working okay. I've had a number of things happen in my life over the last month, some great and some, well, not so great. I'll save those things for another post perhaps. Anyway... Last night, just before going to bed, I landed on the local Christian TV station. There were two ladies speaking about2 Cor. 3.13-6. In those verses, Paul is comparing the obstinate hearts and minds of certain Hebrew (Jewish) people in his day to that of his Hebrew forebearers. To quote, the verses say this: "We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away....

I found out yesterday that another one of my paper proposals as been accepted, this time, for the SCJ (Stone-Campbell Journal) Conference (This will be either my third or fourth year presenting at the SCJ Conference). The title of the paper is: Why Jesus Was Baptized: Immersed In Mark's Story & Culture . I must say, though, that in this paper, I arrive at quite a different conclusion than the one I blogged about some time ago ( HERE ).

I thought I'd pop in and do a brief post (since my computer is still being worked on somewhere out there), so, here are a few more books I got for Christmas: * For a Later Generation: The Transformation of Tradition in Israel, Early Judaism and Early Christianity * A Reordering of Power: A Socio-Political Reading of Mark's Gospel * Ancient Greeks: Change and Tradition, Cultural and Historical Perspectives * Blasphemy and Exaltation in Judaism : The Charge Against Jesus in Mark 14:53 (Biblical Studies Library) * Heritage and Hellenism: the Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Hellenistic Culture and Society) * Jesus and His Adversaries: The Form and Function of the Conflict Stories in the Synoptic Tradition

Since my laptop has been shipped out to HP for a motherboard replacement, I thought I'd swing by the local library and check my email today. I'm glad I did. Waiting for me was a response from Dr. C. Rothschild that my paper for the 2009 Midwest Region SBL was accepted. I will be presenting in the Gospels Section. Here's the title of the paper: A New Reason for Jesus’ Death: Reading Mark Socio-culturally .