Why are Christians afraid of biblical criticism?

Aractus 26, September, 2022

Download audio transcript Around a decade ago, one of my Christian friends put forward the view that the bible should not be subjected to academic enquiry. I had heard this view many times, including by the late minister at my (former) parish. Going back around 20 years now, another friend who was studying at Moore […]

Why I didn’t “lose” my religion

Aractus 01, July, 2019

Almost exactly a year ago I promised a new blog series on atheist biblical studies, and despite writing several drafts I haven’t yet began the series proper. I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about my own journey and why I reject the idea that I “lost” my faith or religion. Christians today […]

Atheist bible studies

Aractus 30, June, 2018

Welcome to my brand new academic blog series. I call it my Atheist Bible Studies. This will be the introductory post, and for this series I will choose topics that Evangelical Christians will find challenging, but which everyone else (atheist, liberal Christian, or other theist) probably won’t. I should note that I’m not an anti-theist, […]

Paul and Luke

Aractus 03, November, 2010

To those who may not think there’s more to the last blog entry, you’re dead wrong. I’ve begun work on new research, and once that is complete I will do a blog entry on it. Today we’re going to talk about the reliability of the NT books, in particular those by the Apostle Paul, and […]

Challenging our methodologies

Aractus 28, August, 2010

In my last article I touched on a subject that transverses several of my interests; God, the Bible, Jewish history, Christian traditions, Jewish traditions, Christian history, the power of assumption and conjecture, the ignoring of evidence. Today we’re going to have a look at our methodology; something that transverses many of my other interests: Science, […]

The Name of God

Aractus 21, July, 2010

Many people know that I don’t consider Wikipeda to be of much use as an authoritative encyclopaedia. This is true of God’s Name. In fact, they have several pages – Tetragrammaton, Jehovah and Yahweh when they should only have one. I feel the need to explain this because I’m going to reveal what God’s name […]