Saturday, April 15, 2023

Saturday Good Reads - April 15, 2023


A couple of millennia or so ago, it wasn’t uncommon for scribes to erase costly parchment and write something new. Like what happened when a scribe took a Syriac text, erased it, and wrote something different. A scholar in Austria has been able to see what the erased text actually was – a 3rd century copy of one of the Gospels.  

It’s been somewhat trendy in academic circles to see the development of Christianity as having had a major break in the 4th and 5th centuries, with the idea being that early Christianity was left behind and its validity didn’t carry forward. (German theologians did something like this back in the 19th century, thinking they were deconstructing the Bible.) Michael Kruger, president and professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, takes a look at the new claims.

 

When faced with danger, we often resort to both fear and – jokes. When things look bleak, why not laugh at them? Johannes Lichtman at Literary Hub discusses how the Ukrainians are helping themselves deal with Putin’s troops – by joking about it.

 

NPR (and, a little later, PBS) quite Twitter this week, upset that Elon Musk had referred to them as “state media.” (BBC was described the same way, and while it was upset, too, it didn’t leave Twitter.) N.S. Lyons at The Upheaval says that wasn’t exactly true; they’re not state media. They’re “state-party” media

 

More Good Reads

 

Faith

 

The Garden at the End of the Universe – Bethel McGrew at Further Up.

 

Exemplary Speech: Hos Good Pastors Wield Exemplary Words – Ray Ortlund at Desiring God.

 

The Week after Easter: When Sin and the Resurrection Collide – Mark Brunansky at The Cripplegate.

 

How Will Christianity Survive during Dark Times? – Michael Brown at Tabletalk.

 

There’s a reason every hit worship song sounds the same – Bob Smietana at Religion News Service.

 

Poetry

 

Resurrection – F.R. Scott at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

British Stuff

 

The City That Fell Off a Cliff – Matthew Green at The Public Domain Review.

 

American Stuff

 

Plundering, Death, and Culpeper National Cemetery: A Twisted Military & Civilian Interaction – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

 

Life and Culture

 

The Problem of Our Gleeful Historical Ignorance – Ray Van Neste at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Rules for Passivists: Ten things to do when you are steamrolled by the inexorable force of history – Jeff Reimer at Comment Magazine.

 

The Case Against ‘Medical Assistance in Dying’ – Brian Bird at Quillette.

 

The Universal: Four Questions Concerning The Internet, part one – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

When Literary Legends Meet – Rick Mofina at CrimeReads.

 

Birthday with the Bard – A.C.S. Bird at Story Warren.

 

Down in Yon Forest – Jeff Johnson



 

Painting: Lubeck orphanage, oil on canvas (1894) by Gotthardt Kuehl (1850-1915)

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