Historical Criticism, Faith, and Writing Psalms

Where is the blog world going?

Five converging thoughts and more - or are they diverging...

James Tabor writes about the recently discussed day of infamy with a well-reasoned exposure of his historical methodological assumptions: Q and Paul are pre 70, early non-Pauline views are lost (citing Crossan's the dark period 30-50), the Gospel and anything else that alludes to the destruction is post 70. That is an oversimplification of what he has written but I think catches the essence. James probably didn't notice, but some time ago in a post on incarnational theology I thought one of his posts' assumptions about Paul materially wrong. But I can't prove it - that's the nature of assumption and the limitation of communication by words.

Kevin Edgecomb recommends The Canon Debate by McDonald and Sanders (not related to me - I don't spell that way). There was a discussion of canon a few months ago stimulated by John Hobbins. What a way to learn! Many of the questions raised are long-standing.

Kevin also talks about the one Author and unity within the canonical writings.

And before I read any of these morning posts, I had been lying on my bed in the twilight (as the Psalmist describes in several places) wondering (if you say God is out of the discussion) or in dialogue with my LORD, (if God is in) how the Psalms got written. Were there versions? (See the theological engineering discussion). Was there Peer review? How do we fare today as each one brings a psalm or a revelation to the table? Lingamish has provided an interesting example of how the blog world can react and respond. Doug at Metacatholic and many others - even academics! - have posted poetry over the past few months.

Addendum: while browsing Mark Goodacre's latest blogroll, I found this poetic post.

Thank you all for such stimuli.