BeThinking posted a new lecture featuring Dr. Simon Gathercole.
Here’s the speaker bio:
Dr Simon Gathercole is Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, at the University of Cambridge. He is particularly fascinated by the connections between the New Testament and its contemporary literature.
Summary:
Simon Gathercole shows how the geographical information in the New Testament Gospels demonstrates their historical reliability and their basis in eyewitness sources. The illustrated lecture lasts about 60 minutes and is followed by about 20 minutes of Q&A.
BeThinking has a PDF containing all the slides used in the lecture.
The lecture is here:
Topics:
Detailed geography is difficult to fake, especially when it is far into the past
Bible authors would have to rely on eyewitness testimony if they wanted to get geographic details right
You can even cross-reference the geographic details mentioned in the New Testament with extra-Biblical sources of that time
Cities mentioned in the Bible are mentioned in other sources
Locations that are mentioned in Josephus, a Jewish historian
Locations that are mentioned in the Rabbis
22 of 27 places mentioned in the gospels are attested
If you compare the gospels with Josephus they are as good
Example slide – he shows where these cities in orange are mentioned outside the Bible:
At the end of the lecture 22 out of 27 cities are attested in other sources
This lecture caught my eye because it was all about connecting the Bible to evidence outside the Bible. I like evidence. You should give it a listen.
Hillary Clinton look bored about the deaths of 4 Americans who asked for her help
The radically leftist Washington Post posted an article that explained the big story on Monday.
Excerpt:
Thousands of leaked emails have sealed the fate of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s uneven five-plus-year tenure as DNC chair.
Wasserman Schultz’s resignation announcement Sunday afternoon comes as a bad situation just keeps getting worse — and appears as though it might continue to do so. That’s because WikiLeaks has so far released nearly 20,000 emails, new details are still being discovered, and there is still the prospect of additional, damaging emails coming to light.
Many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Basically all of these examples came late in the primary — after Hillary Clinton was clearly headed for victory — but they belie the national party committee’s stated neutrality in the race even at that late stage.
One of the biggest revelations from these e-mails was how the DNC, which is supposed to be fair to all the candidates running, basically threw the primary for Hillary Clinton – it was rigged that she would win the primary, and the DNC was actively opposing Sanders at every step.
Democratic Party bigwigs enlisted prominent media outlets to slant coverage to boost Hillary Clinton and sandbag Bernie Sanders, according to some of the 19,000 e-mails hacked from the Democratic National Committee’s servers and posted to WikiLeaks.
The messages reveal behind-the-scenes meetings and off-the-record exchanges between DNC operatives and staffers at newspapers, networks and news Web sites, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Politico and RealClearPolitics.
In one case, an investigative reporter at Politico gave DNC officials a sneak peek at an article about Clinton’s state-party fund-raising — before his editor even saw the piece.
“Per agreement . . . any thoughts appreciated,” wrote Politico’s Ken Vogel to the DNC’s national press secretary, Mark Paustenbach, on April 30.
“Vogel gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it,” Paustenbach told his boss, communications director Luis Miranda.
The communication officials cherry-picked reporters.
“We [have] been working him for weeks in general on writing up something positive,” Miranda wrote of The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent on May 20. “We think he’d play ball.”
But, there were other big surprises, like this one reported by the Daily Caller about the Democrat party’s plans to reward big donors with cushy federal appointments funded by taxpayer dollars.
Excerpt:
Democratic National Committee documents recently released by WikiLeaks include spreadsheets and emails that appear to show party officials planning which donors and prominent fundraisers to provide with appointments to federal boards and commissions.
The documents, which were circulated among top DNC officials in April, could raise legal questions for the party, says Ken Boehm, the chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.
“The disclosed DNC emails sure look like the potential Clinton Administration has intertwined the appointments to federal government boards and commissions with the political and fund raising operations of the Democratic Party,” Boehm told The Daily Caller.
“That is unethical, if not illegal.”
[…]President Obama has been criticized for appointing dozens of top fundraisers — called “bundlers” in the political fundraising realm — to ambassadorships and other cushy federal positions.
Well, yes. That’s no surprise to anyone who has followed his many scandals, especially the green energy subsidies given to his top bundlers.
I guess it’s no surprise that 5 seconds that the DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, after receiving news that she wsa being released, immediately signed up with the Clinton campaign. She might as well have been working for them all along, for all the good the DNC did Bernie Sanders.
The national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign Foundation will speak at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this week, marking the first time an openly transgender person will address a major party’s convention.
“Hillary Clinton won’t be the only woman to make history this Thursday. When Sarah McBride takes the stage, she will become the first transgender person to speak at a national Democratic or Republican convention,” Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said in a statement on Sunday.
“Sarah’s inclusion in Thursday’s program is a significant milestone for our community, and it sends a strong message that transgender people and their voices matter.”
Sarah McBride was invited to speak at the convention by the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus.
[…]”I’m so proud to stand with the LGBT Caucus and speak out in support of Hillary Clinton, because we know she stands with us.”
Griffin, who will also speak at the convention, said the event will show a clear contrast between the Democratic and Republican tickets.
“I’m also honored to address a national convention where LGBTQ advocates will play such an integral and historic role,” he said.
“Next week’s Democratic National Convention will underscore the stark contrast between Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine’s vision for a more equal America, and [Republican presidential nominee]Donald Trump and Mike Pence’s agenda of hate and division.”
The Human Rights Campaign endorsed Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in January.
You might remember that the Human Rights Campaign has been featured on this blog a number of times, because they are the leading group seeking to silence, coerce and otherwise suppress Judeo-Christian values in the public square.
Let’s review the history the Human Rights Campaign to discover their agenda from actual actions:
called the Family Research Council a “hate group“, after the FRC was attacked by a gun-wielding gay rights activist, who was later convicted of domestic terrorism
How far would the Human Rights Campaign go to achieve their goal of stamping out any disagreement with their morality? We’re going to find out, because lots of Democrats who falsely claim to be Christians keep voting for the Democrat Party.
