Monday Morning Odds and Ends

For those in the great state of Georgia (and surrounding areas), you might be very interested in attending the Greer-Heard Forum February 3-4, 2006, featuring William Dembski and Michael Ruse on the topic of Intelligent Design. Here’s the link.
   
I’m reviewing a manuscript for an upcoming book so that I can write an endorsement for it (more when it comes out of course), and ran across a tremendous section demonstrating the kind of work the Jesus Seminar fellows put out. To make a long story short, the Seminar fellow who is starting to become the new “face” of the group, Dr. Price, is documented in this new book to have utterly melted down on an alleged textual variant at Luke 1:34. He calls the text into question (and hence the virgin birth) based upon a single, yes I said single, Latin manuscript; further, he gets the manuscript wrong, and forgets to mention that the reason the manuscript doesn’t have the verse is because it is a fragmentary manuscript that begins at Luke 1:64!!! So, based on a single manuscript in Latin (that is one of 10,000) that doesn’t even start until thirty verses later, he brings into question the entirety of the Greek manuscript tradition and hence the virgin birth of Christ! The sad thing is, of course, that in our day, he is a “credentialed scholar,” and hence his word is beyond question in the minds of most. Time to start making “credentialed scholar” mean “has demonstrated a consistent ability to handle the material in his specialty” rather than “went to the right school.” The Jesus Seminar is a very good argument for the de-mythologizing of scholarship. Anyway, I’ll let you know about this new book when it comes off the presses. Well worth the read.
   
Got a call from London this morning. Spoke with Dr. Peter Masters of the Metropolitan Tabernacle and arranged the topics of my talks there in February. I will be doing two sessions on assurance, two on the canon of Scripture, and one on John 6. I am truly looking forward to this opportunity!