Look who I discovered being cited in the august OED… I wish I knew more about the work of OED lexicographers, my heroes. I don't know, for example, how OED editors find/choose their citation sources. It's just that beyond Shakespeare and various editions of the Bible,...
Mark Ward
Does “By Faith We Understand” (Heb 11:3) Have It Backwards?
A Christian friend who struggles with doubt recently wrote me asking why I chose the name of long-time blog, byfaithweunderstand.com. Today I was thinking again about those four words “by faith we understand” and I feel a physical reaction to it. It’s hard to swallow...
Home Studio Tour and Videography Kit
Updated 03/03/2021 Several friends have asked, so here’s a tour of my home video studio—which I set up for the second season of the Bible Study Magazine Podcast and for my own YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/TtVBIof3Olo Updated shot of my studio (3/3/21): And this...
Christianity and Liberalism and Homosexuality
J.I. Packer’s first book, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God, published when he was 32 years old in 1958, provides a brilliantly simple analysis of the three major approaches to Christian religious authority that were then, as now, on offer. Briefly, they were…. 1)...
Review: Laurence M. Vance’s Archaic Words and the Authorized Version
I'm trying to do what wiser people have recommended; I'm trying to critique only the best and strongest representatives of the various KJV-Only viewpoints available. I recently posted a YouTube review of Laurence M. Vance’s 1997 book, Archaic Words and the Authorized...
False Friends Video Series
JICYMI, I'm putting up a series of vides on YouTube talking through "False Friends in the KJV." Here's a link to the whole playlist. In my estimation, "False Friends" is the unanswerable argument in the KJV-Only debate. It's one thing to say, "Anyone with a bit of...
Inherited Sin and COVID-19 Epistemology
One of my walking buddies at work is a statistician who does data analysis for our company. Of statistics, I guess. I always enjoy talking to him; I like the way his mind works. I’ve long been interested in epistemology, the question of how we know—how we justify our...
When Will the KJV Be Sufficiently Unintelligible to the “Plow Boy” That Change Will Become Necessary?
The following was written as an appendix to the audio version of Authorized: The Use and Misuse of the King James Bible. But there's a longer story: I sent Dr. Jeff Riddle a review copy of my book, and he submitted a review to a theological journal but kindly sent it...
The Truth about Marijuana
Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence by Alex BerensonMy rating: 5 of 5 starsFor every book there is an equal and opposite book. I read Smoke Signals by Martin Lee in preparation for my own small coauthored book, Can I Smoke Pot?...
The New ESV Heirloom Single Column Personal Size Bible
A story in pictures. Because this new ESV Bible—the ESV Heirloom Single Column Personal Size Bible—needs only a one-word review: exquisite. Bloggers write words when none are needed, however, because the word-count of the internet is not yet full—so I will oblige with...