The Hump of the Camel

Or, being interpreted, “How do you know what Jesus would do?” Soon after I thought of this title (which turns out to be unoriginal anyway), following up a train of thought in recent posts on Bible interpretation (and Bible rejection), our Pastor providentially introduced his sermon with the original phrase, “What would Jesus do?”. It was in the context of thinking about Creation care (a series based on material from A Rocha, whose founder Pete Harris did some blogs on The Hump a couple of years ago).

The pastor’s point was that we’ll look in vain for direct teaching on whether Jesus would have used an electric car, public transport or private jet, because “What Jesus would do” in those days was to walk, for sure. So it’s necessary to enquire into the Bible’s teaching on creation overall and do serious thinking in order to make our own lifestyle decisions. Continue reading →

Current controversies over scriptual infallibility lead scholars to reinterpret the often naive and sometimes even crude statements made by the biblical writers, including Jesus. This paper seeks to suggest how the apostle Peter might have prevented an unfortunate schism in the early Jesus community had he been better educated in the now well-established principles of academic freedom and inclusive discourse. I refer to the unfortunate incident in which Peter clearly lost his temper in his disrespectful and uncivil reponse to a fellow scholar, Simon Magus. Continue reading →