Pisteuomen - πιστευομεν - T. Michael W. Halcomb

I ran across an intriguing piece of information today regarding Christmas & the Bible back in 1952. Of course, Harry Truman was the president during this period and if you didn't already know, this was also when the new RSV (Revised Standard Version) of the Bible came out. In fact, Truman happily recieved a copy from the publishers at the White House. This was big news. It was such big news because, going into Advent, a lot of Christians argued that this new translation was a direct assault on Christmas. Why? Well, one reason is because of how it rendered Isa. 7.14, you know, the verse where the traditional rendering of "virgin" was now translated as "young woman". In turn, this led to a re-reading of the Gospel accounts and Mary's conception and birth of Jesus. A firestorm debate arose over whether or not Mary's pregnancy was of supernatural origin or human agency. According to the RSV, said some, Mary had been relegated to a "young woman...

Well, I've been at this blogging thing for about 3 years now and today, Pisteuomen has reached a milestone: 100,000 visits. To be honest, I've gotten way more mileage out of this site than I ever imagined I would have. I've made lots of friends through this site, many of whom I've been able to meet in person. I've had numerous people recognize me at churches or conferences or various places from this site, which has been kind of fun. I've enjoyed all of the good dialogue and debate, as well as encouragement from everyone. Though 100,000 is not much compared to some sites, I consider it a pretty good achievement for being an actual biblical studies blog (that is, a blog that actually does biblical studies related stuff). Anyway, here's to another 100,000 and even 1,000,000!

Around a decade ago, when I was working on my MDiv, I was confronted for the first time with inclusive language policies. One of my Bible professors at the time was so adamant about un-gendered language, especially for God, that if you referred to God with the pronoun "He" in her class, you were at risk of being kicked out of that class session and docked points. Inclusivity was the battle cry and if you transgressed you would be wounded in one way or another. At that time I was still young in my biblical studies career and found it challenging to navigate through the issue. I had always heard God referred to as "He" and it was a little jarring to hear otherwise. It was somewhat illuminating to realize that, in fact, there are places in Scripture where feminine metaphors or imagery is used of God. Recently, in a blog post titled "Is God a Man?", by Rachel Held Evans , she too makes this point. Two more degrees in biblical studies and many years lat...

Here, the 19th century, renowned French artist Gustaf Dore imagines the scene of Noah's flood narrative that we leave out of childrens' bibles in this etching:

As many of you are aware, someone played a nasty April Fools Day trick on me this morning (at least that's my theory) by hijacking my site. I tried everything I knew to get back into the site to fix it but my last resort was to email Blogger and have them go in, change things and then reissue me login info. Thankfully, I use the free "Blogger Backup" utility , so, once access was restored, I was able to get the site back to normal from old but up-to-date, files. If you didn't see the drama that went down, here's a screenshot of the site that I took (I couldn't even right-click to get source code!!!): Of course, Jim, being who he is, thought I did this in retaliation for some snide remark he made in the recent biblioblogs carnival but that's not the case (oh the audacity of him to think I'd read a post from his site!!!). Whatever. Anyway, things are back to normal. Many thanks to Blogger for coming to the rescue! I dare Wordpress to even try to ...

If you host your site on blogger, you should really consider using the fast, free and incredibly useful backup utility called "Blogger Backup". With this tool, you can save any and all posts you have on various Blogger accounts. In the case that Blogger deleted your site or someone hacked it or if you deleted it years ago and then wanted to restore it, if you had this tool, you'd be able to do it in minutes. I have over 900 posts on Pisteuomen and this tool backed them up in under 1 minute. If you're using Blogger but not this utility, all I have to say is: Why not!? You can get "Blogger Backup" by clicking the image-link below:

To all of the readers here at Pisteuomen, thanks for bearing with me today as I made some significant updates to the site. It's probably safe to say that the most readily noticeable change is the "sliding menu" on the side of the page. When you scroll your mouse over that, you get a host of important links. Be sure to check those out!!! One of the links that you will find on the side menu, has also been added to the right-hand column: Twitter. That's right, I finally set up a Twitter account today and I will begin Tweeting soon. By far, the biggest change, though, has to do with the commenting here on Pisteuomen. Whereas commenting was limited to Blogger, OpenId & Anonymous before, now, if you have a Facebook, LinkedIn or Disqus account, you can also comment under those accounts!!! (Some kinks may need worked out but everything should be up and going now.) Anyway, one of the things that I've tried to do since the inception of this site is to make it more user-...

Daniel & Tonya over at HebrewAndGreekReader have devised a list of students (in theology/biblical studies) that blog or have blogs. As of now, they have it categorized by country and academic instituation. Check it out here: Student Bloggers . If you are a student with a blog, check to see if you're name is added. If not, they will add it.

It's been a while since I've utilized this feature of Pisteuomen, but I'm proud to resurrect it and bring it back to life, the feature is: A Beginning Blogger . I started this feature for the following reasons (here's what I wrote in the initial piece about it): "...I realize how tough it is to get people to visit your site, comment, add you to their blogroll, etc. Now, I've done a lot to make my blog both resource and user-friendly and I believe that's contributed to its success but it might have also helped if some more well-known persons helped draw attention to Pisteuomen. Well, with the conviction that the biblio-blogosphere is not about constantly catering to the egos of a select few or having to be around for years in order to make it (among other things, like creating a resourceful, edifying online community), I thought I'd add this feature." The Beginning Blogger that I'd like to mention today is Mike Koke. Mike maintains the blog ...

Someone may have thought so. Apparently, two Google searches, back-to-back, resulted in landings at Pisteuomen. The first search was: "Mary, mother of Jesus, raped". The second one was: "Four-eyed Baby". I don't know, maybe the line of thinking was that if Mary was raped, Jesus had some type of bodily impairment. Either way, it's always intersting to see how people end up at one's site! Needless to say, I've never seen a manger scene with a four-eyed baby Jesus!!!

Prior to the first of this year, I had been blogging for about a year and a half. In that time period, I never missed a day of updating Pisteuomen. However, with the advent of 2009, a few things changed and in many ways, I had to temporarily cut back on my blogging activities. While I plan to write a post some time in the near future with more specifics, here, I just want to be quite general as to what's been going on in my life. First of all, just before the advent of 2009 (December 2008) I was quite busy on a number of projects. I was filling out PhD applications, finishing up two conference papers and doing my ministerial duties. As January rolled around, the motherboard on my computer melted and I had to get it replaced; this led to a nearly 2-week hiatus. Second of all, when I recieved my computer back in mid-January, I needed to finish my two papers for the conferences immediately. This meant a 3-4 week leave from blogging. Third of all, at the end of January, I started my ow...

I just got back from Denny's where finding a parking space was kind of aggravating and standing in the cold MI weather wasn't too fun. But...I only stood outside for about 10 minutes. Then, I went inside and got a raincheck from the manager that is good until Feb. 13th. I decided to take the raincheck when I found out it was taking people over an hour to get their meals (not worth it!!!). It's all part of a promotion that Denny's is running today. If you go to the restaurant, you can get one of the Grand Slam meals for free. If you don't have the time to wait or don't want to, take your raincheck and be on your way!

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

Okay, that was meant to look like an expletive but its not, it's a cover-up for the word "motherboard" (although I felt like letting the word you thought I was referring to fly when this all happened). Last night, the motherboard on my laptop had a meltdown and now, I have to ship the thing off for two weeks. Needless to say, as I type this post on a computer that isn't mine, I probably won't be blogging much for the next week or two. Please, though, skim through the tabs above and check out some of the site's other content. As soon as my mother@#$%* gets replaced, I'll have more substantive posts. For now, however, I'll shall take somewhat of a short break. Happy Holidays.

...and Happy Holidays from all of us here at Pisteuomen (oh wait, it's just me, Michael Halcomb). Regardless, travel safely and share the love of Christ wherever you go!

One of the things I like best about blogging is the chance to interact with other people who love discussing the same types of things I'm interested in. One benefit of all of this is that sometimes, you get to meet the people you've come to know via modem. Over a year ago, through dialogue on another blog, I met Chris Vanallsburg (I'm wearing the brown coat and he's wearing the black vest in the pic). Chris is a native of MI but now lives in NC. Through various conversations on Facebook and each other's blogs, we began to get to know each other. This month, when he came home for the holidays, we decided to get together for lunch and visit a couple of bookstores. We ate at Panera and also had a visit to a Reformed bookstore (yes, he's one of those people!) and Eerdmans. For me, it was like Christmas-come-early going to those shops. I picked up 12 books and it all rang-in under $50. I was quite pleased. Chris and I had some good conversation and despite the insan...

Have you ever wanted to have all the Bible & Theology blogs that you like in one place? Want to un-muddy your page-reader or blogroll? Want some kind of aggregator that you don't have to manage? Want to visit a blog without trying to type in a url you can't remember, going to your page-reader or googling it? Well, now you can have what you want. Today, a couple of days before Christmas, I am giving a present away here at Pisteuomen. The present is called "The Pistueomen Bible & Theology Bloggers Toolbar". This toolbar, a one-of-a-kind, contains scores of sites of active Bible and Theology bloggers. A couple of months ago, NT Wrong began collecting working urls of bloggers. Every url listed on his site, plus, many more are included here. One of the best things about the toolbar is that it is updateable, so, if you're not included this month, if you contact me with the proper info., your site can be included in next month's update. The toolbar is incredi...

Have you ever had a friend that smelled really bad but you just didn't have the nerve to tell them? Have you ever been talking with someone and their breath just wreaked? Have you ever been playing basketball and your teammates pits just kill you? Well, what do you say? What do you do? And is there a nice way to do it? Here's what Marcus Aurelius once said (I must say, its quite a joy to stumble across passages like this when reading ancient literature!!!): "Are you irritated with one whose arm-pits smell? Are you angry with one whose mouth has a foul odor? What good will your anger do you? He has this mouth, he has these arm-pits. Such emanations must come from such things. 'But the man has reason,' you will say, 'and he could, if he took pains, discover wherein he offends.' I wish you well of your discovery. Now you too have reason; by your rational faculty, stir up his rational faculty; show him his fault, admonish him. For if he listens, you will cure h...

Here's a photo of me standing next to all of my Mark articles and books. As you can see, the stack is over 6 ft. tall. Too bad I couln't include some of the stuff I have on my computer too.

Some time ago, there was a cartoon in The New Yorker that had a CEO ending his board meeting with the following remark: “And so, while the end-of-the-world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors, we believe that the pre-end period will be filled with unprecedented opportunities for profit.” You know, this cartoon really hits the nail on the head. Two of the fastest growing beliefs in Western Christianity have to do with end-times and money. I want to suggest here that when both of these tenets are accepted by one person, let alone a group of persons, the atmosphere is ripe for hedonism! How so? Well, think about it this way: If you're an end-times, rapture-believeing type of person, chances are, you already have it ingrained in you that you couldn't care less about this planet. The thought is: "Why should I care, it's all going to burn up and end in disaster anyway. I'm going to get raptured and spared, so, it's not my problem to worry about it."...