Floods in the Desert

Posted Sunday, December 31, 2006 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Old Testament Comments: None
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The desert in Israel does not get much rain, and so when it does rain, the ground does not know what to do with it. We lived in the desert during the winter for a few months, and we didn't see any flash floods, although we did see some new creeks come into existance that were not there before. The old time kibbutzniks told stories about cows being swept away by flash floods. But in this recent video from Israel you can see a true to life flash flood. I found it here. Read more of Floods in the Desert

Why Only Two Christmas Stories?

Redaction Critiscm and Bethlehem

Posted Tuesday, January 09, 2007 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Gospels Comments: 1
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Have you ever wondered why Mark and John do not tell the Christmas story? Or why the story has so many differences between Matthew and Luke? The reason does not have to do with the writers not knowing the story, or Matthew chaning the shepherds into magi (as Gundry claims). Instead, the reason has to do with the grand scheme of each gospel. Read more of Why Only Two Christmas Stories?

Friends with a nose

Fun with Ugaritic

Posted Wednesday, January 17, 2007 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Old Testament Comments: 1
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All langauges have a vareity of idioms that sound really funny to speakers of other languages. Semetic languages have their share. One example is the use of "nose" to refer to anger. When Exodus 34:6 says that God is "slow to anger," the Hebrew phrase is that he "has a long nose." When people get angry, their nose gets hot. But then last night I was reading the Ugartic tale "Baal and Yam" and discovered another unusual idiom. Baal gets angry with Yam, but the literal Ugartic is that he "became friends with his nose." So be careful about getting cozy with a nose! Read more of Friends with a nose

Time's Sermon

Posted Sunday, January 28, 2007 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Culture and Theology Comments: None
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The latest issue of Time (January 29, 2007) was devoted to the topic of the mind and body. There were many fascinating articles, but one of them caught my attention: The Mystery of Consciousness, by Steven Pinker, a professor at Harvard. This articles surveys the "Easy" problem and the "Hard" problem. The easy problem is "to distinguish conscious from unconscious mental computations, identify its correlates in the brain and why it evolved." The hard problem is "why it feels like something to have a conscious process going on in ones head - why there is first-person, subjective experience." There were two parts of the article that jumped out at me. Read more of Time's Sermon

Prodigal Son Returns

Posted Sunday, March 15, 2009 by eric.mattison
Categories: Bible; Theology; Popular Culture Comments: None
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So it has been a long time since I was last able to post. Sorry fair readers, my levity was lacking, but it has all been in service to my country. Honestly, I haven't been having a great many deep thoughts in the last few months. Recently I have been experiencing a little bit of a personal revival in the Biblical lands that Abram once escaped in search of the promised land.

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