Louis Markos

I feel great pity for Bart Ehrman. It appears that the kind of fundamentalism in which the Christian believer turned biblical debunker was raised did not prepare him for the challenges he would face in college. He was taught, rightly, that there are no contradictions in the Bible, but he was trained, quite falsely, to interpret the non-contradictory nature of the Bible in modern, scientific, post-Enlightenment terms. That is to say, he was encouraged to test the truth of the Bible against a verification system that has only existed for some 250 years. Continue Reading »

The careful reader of Genesis will notice an odd, countercultural pattern running throughout the book. Again and again, God privileges the younger son over the elder (Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over Reuben), a privileging that mirrors, and perhaps explains, God’s peculiar choice of Israel as his chosen people… . Continue Reading »

I normally avoid documentaries that use questionable methods of Bible interpretation to promote the gay lifestyle as both natural and normative. For the Bible Tells Me So (2007), however, was not so easy to dismiss. Directed and co-written by Daniel Karslake, this manipulative yet compelling, slanted yet challenging documentary presents us not only with the expected attempts to reshape the Bible on a modern/postmodern lathe, but with the powerful, heart-breaking stories of five Christian, church-going families who are forced to deal with the reality of having an “out-of-the-closet” son or daughter… . Continue Reading »