Episodes
Monday May 29, 2017
Dennis Venema & Scot McKnight - Adam and the Genome
Monday May 29, 2017
Monday May 29, 2017
Episode: Evangelicals, grab your Noah's ark replicas. Atheists, seize your Darwinian fish symbols. It's the mother of all culture wars. Except Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight, who both hold traditional evangelical Christian convictions, suggest that the war is needless. It is okay to acknowledge the Jesus fish and to affirm that humans and fish descend from common ancestors. How did Dennis, an evolutionary biologist, and Scot, a New Testament scholar, come together to collaborate? What new evidence has emerged about the human genome in support of evolution? And the crux: How can we make sense of the Bible's description of Adam and Eve as the first humans in light of multiple strands of evidence that suggests humans evolved as a group of no less than 10,000? Hosted by Matthew W. Bates.
Guests: Dennis Venema (PhD, University of British Columbia) is Associate Professor of Biology at Trinity Western University in British Columbia. He is a fellow of BioLogos, where he writes a popular blog, Letters to the Duchess. He has also penned numerous scholarly articles.
Scot McKnight (PhD, Nottingham) is Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lombard, IL. The author of more than fifty books, Scot runs the highly influential blog Jesus Creed and is a world-renowned expert on early Christianity. Some of his popular titles include The Jesus Creed (Paraclete, 2004; a Christianity Today book of the year); The Blue Parakeet (Zondervan, 2008), and A Fellowship of Differents (Zondervan, 2014). McKnight has also written many books for a scholarly audience, including The Epistle of James (NICNT; Eerdmans, 2010), and one of my personal favorites, The King Jesus Gospel (Zondervan, 2011).
Book: Dennis R. Venema and Scot McKnight, Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science (Brazos, 2017). Genomic science indicates that humans descend not from an individual pair but from a large population. What does this mean for the basic claim of many Christians: that humans descend from Adam and Eve? The authors conclude that genome research about evolution and Scripture are not irreconcilable.
The OnScript Quip (our review): The evidence of nature or Scripture? A tiresome false dilemma. Interpreting the data with clarity and verve, Venema and McKnight show us how cutting-edge science and thoughtful Scripture scholarship can move us beyond faith-versus-science polemics and toward an integrated Christian worldview. -- Matthew W. Bates, Quincy University, OnScript
Monday May 15, 2017
Susannah Heschel - The Aryan Jesus
Monday May 15, 2017
Monday May 15, 2017
Episode: The story of German Christian anti-Semitism of the Nazi era is still being told. Susannah Heschel's book The Aryan Jesus brings to light the archives of the 'Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life,' and tells the story of how German churches found common cause with Nazi's over their shared anti-Semitic commitments. In this episode we discuss Susannah Heschel's remarkable upbringing, her journey into studying the 'pathologies of biblical scholarship,' and her research on The Aryan Jesus.
Guest: 'Susannah Heschel is the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. Her scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of biblical scholarship, and the history of anti-Semitism. Her numerous publications include Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (University of Chicago Press), which won a National Jewish Book Award, and The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press). She has also taught at Southern Methodist University and Case Western Reserve University.' [from the Dartmouth website]
Heschel tells the story of her childhood and relationship with her father Abraham Joshua Heschel in a beautifully written piece called 'My Father, Myself.' Abraham Joshua Heschel is the author of The Sabbath, The Prophets, and many other highly influential books. In her piece, Susannah tells the story of her father's escape from Poland in 1940, including his involvement in the civil rights movement. Abraham Heschel famously marched with MLK from Selma to Montgomery, an experience that he describes thus: 'When I marched in Selma, I felt like my legs were praying.' She also describes her father's support of her feminism and scholarship.
Book: In The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press, 2008), Susannah Heschel traces the redefinition of Jesus as an Aryan opponent of the Jewish people during the Nazi era. German Christian theologians and biblical scholars aligned themselves with the Nazis (and many became Nazis) via their shared anti-Semitism and formed the 'Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life.' Heschel digs into the archives of this institute to tell its story, and to set it in the wider context of Christian anti-Semitism during the Third Reich. The members of this institute include some of the most influential biblical scholars of the time. Heschel then follows the post-war career 'success' of the institute's members as they found jobs in universities, seminaries, and churches in East and West Germany. The book raises troubling but important questions about Jewish-Christian relationships.
Monday May 01, 2017
Jeremiah Unterman - Justice for All
Monday May 01, 2017
Monday May 01, 2017
Episode:What role has the Hebrew Bible played in shaping our modern views on ethics? Many Christians have casually believed that the radical ethics of the New Testament provide the moral foundation of the West. Remarkably, Christians are often unaware of the deep roots of Western morality in Hebrew Bible. Many are often surprised to find out that Jesus did not invent the ideal of loving our neighbor as ourselves, rather he is quoting Leviticus from the Torah. Moreover, what we often understand to be modern and civil about Western morality—caring for the poor and orphans, inclusion of the immigrant, weekend rest and labor laws, offering forgiveness, and more—actually comes directly out of the scrolls of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament).
Dru Johnson interviews Jeremiah Unterman about his new book—Justice for All: How the Jewish Bible Revolutionized Ethics. Unterman has offered work that not only presents us with the Hebraic roots of our morality, but demonstrates that this ethical framework is found only in the Hebrew Bible and not in the literature of ancient Israel’s neighbors: the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and more.
Guest: Jeremiah Unterman was the Director of the Association of Modern Orthodox Day Schools in North America before becoming a Resident Scholar at the Herzl Institute. He is the author of a T&T Clark monograph on Jeremiah, From Repentance to Redemption: Jeremiah’s Thought in Transition as well as numerous scholarly articles.
He has taught at Dartmouth College, Northwestern University, University of California – Irvine, and other universities. He received a B.A. in Hebraic Studies from Rutgers University, an M.A. in Bible from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Ph.D. in the Judaica Program of the Near Eastern Studies Department at U.C., Berkeley, where he studied with the renowned scholar: Jacob Milgrom.
Book: From the publisher:
"Justice for All demonstrates that the Jewish Bible, by radically changing the course of ethical thought, came to exercise enormous influence on Jewish thought and law and also laid the basis for Christian ethics and the broader development of modern Western civilization. Jeremiah Unterman shows us persuasively that the ethics of the Jewish Bible represent a significant moral advance over Ancient Near East cultures. Moreover, he elucidates how the Bible’s unique conception of ethical monotheism, innovative understanding of covenantal law, and revolutionary messages from the prophets form the foundation of many Western civilization ideals. Justice for All connects these timeless biblical texts to the persistent themes of our times: immigration policy, forgiveness and reconciliation, care for the less privileged, and attaining hope for the future despite destruction and exile in this world."
The OnScript Quip (our review): I have both read this book in early drafts and used it teaching freshmen in a Christian context at The King's College. I have been convinced of its merits by the content, but also by how it has helped young college students reassess the bible’s position in the world of ancient literature. This book not only offers fresh insights into the ethical matrix of the Hebrew Bible, but also acts as a primer folks not intimately familiar with the literature of the bible or the ancient Near East. I would dare say that many Christians might be surprised by the ethical teaching of the Torah and prophets, from which the New Testament texts derive most all of their ethics. - Dru Johnson, The OnScript Podcast
Street interviews by Sabrina Sanchez.
["Blind Love Dub" from this episode by Jeris © 2017, Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/VJ_Memes/55416 Ft: Kara Square (mindmapthat)]