1. The latest Credenda (not online yet) on Flannery O'Connor
Picture is of the second to last issue; quote is from the newest:
"...to gather a bunch of the saints together and preach like renegade thunder against all the sins that are being committed elsewhere in the nation... the entertainment value is high, but that's it.... One of the great failures in the modern evangelical pulpit is a failure at just this point. Ministers are not the courageous heralds of truth that they ought to be. If they preached against the sins that are prevalent in their own congregations, it could have all kinds of negative consequences. Suppose the sin in question is committed by the biggest tither? Or by a retired minister who might foment a church split? Or by a couple of the elders? A godly preacher should expect to get into trouble. He should resolve to preach it, straight up the middle, and without apology. He should pray regularly for grace so that when the day of trouble arrives, he will not turn aside to the right or to the left."
2. Biblical Archaeology Review
Excavations in Biblical Edom have turned up interesting results:
"Did King David do battle with the Edomites? The Bible says he did. It would be unlikely, however, if Edom was not yet a sufficiently complex society to organize and field an army... Until recently, many scholars took this position... those scholars... insisted that ancient Israel likewise did not develop into a state until a century or more after David's time.... We have discovered a degree of social complexity in the land of Edom that demonstrates the weak reed on the basis of which a nuber of scholars have scoffed at the idea of a state or complex chiefdom in Edom at this early period - and, by extension, a state in Judah.... Edom was a complex society centuries earlier [than thought previously], as reflected in the Bible."
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