Book Review: A History of Florida Through Black Eyes
I’d describe Marvin Dunn’s A History of Florida Through Black Eyes as two books comingled. The first book is history and sets up the reading of the second, which is the author’s personal memoir. In the memoir section are three chapters on lynching, a historical phenomenon that Dunn sees as unfinished business that he aims …
The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Book of Genesis
Bible readers are usually alarmed when they discover that stories like the Great Flood and creation from chaos were commonplace in the ancient Middle East. This post suggests that Bible students simply read ancient mythology that has influenced the development of the Old Testament. To do this is to discover that mythological materials have been profoundly reworked by biblical editors and pose no threat to faith.
From Chaos to Satan: The Story of Evil in the Bible, Part 1
The inspiration for this two-part post comes from Bernhard Anderson’s brilliant study Creation Versus Chaos, written in 1965. The decade of the 60s was a time when scholars were beginning to realize that Christianity needed to re-consider the Old Testament’s creation texts and the role of creation in Christian faith. Creation is much more than …
From Chaos to Satan: The Story of Evil in the Bible, Part 2
This is the second of two posts on evil in the Bible. The first post lays out a lesser-known Old Testament idea of evil. This post describes a more familiar New Testament view, where evil takes on personality. The point of these essays is to urge Christians to re-embrace the earlier Old Testament view, which …
Banned Books: Resources and Reflections
Reflections on censorship and the banning of books.
Essay on Miseducation in Florida
–Sue Hargis Spigel Each day in Florida brings new wonders. Which freedom will the governor and his legislature remove from individuals and local governments? What citizen initiatives will the County Commission ignore in favor of land developers and other coffer stuffers? What rebranding of history will the Florida Board of Education foist on us? The …
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
Stephen King doesn’t organize a plot before he starts writing down his haunting stories. I learned this about halfway through his On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, and I was fascinated with the reasoning behind what strikes me as a risky way to write. He begins with a situation, a tantalizing moment in …