Westminster Theological Seminary has apparently decided that Peter Enns‘ views on inspiration, as described in his book Inspiration and Incarnation disqualify him from have caused too much controversy to allow him to continue* teaching at that seminary. You can conveniently start with a recent Christianity Today blog post for the basic facts; to explore further, visit Brandon Withrow’s blog. I jumped at the chance to read and review Enns’s book when it first came out, and I found it refreshing and encouraging. As I wrote in my review (Restoration Quarterly 48.2 [2006]: 119–120), any criticisms I have would center on Enns being too evangelical, and thereby imposing on the Bible certain theological claims that I don’t think the Bible itself really supports. That said, I recommend the book, and commend Enns’s considerable success in combining evangelical sensibilities with critical honesty. Coming from the other side, the powers-that-be at Westminster now consider Enns to be insufficiently orthodox too controversial,* due to his understanding of inspiration—so they have suspended him from teaching there.

While I don’t begrudge Westminster the right to shape its faculty as it sees fit, Enns’s suspension saddens me. I feel bad for Enns himself, and wish him well in finding a new teaching position somewhere else, if that’s the course he chooses to pursue (I hope it will be). I must also confess that my opinion of Westminster has gone down more than one notch as a result of these events. Continuing in this personal vein, I will add that Enns’s experience makes me appreciate all the more the non-creedalism of my native Churches of Christ. Not that we don’t occasionally have our own questionable firings and heresy hunts, but at least in such matters the core questions center on biblical interpretation rather than fidelity to the Westminster Confession of Faith or some other creed. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help Peter Enns right now.

* Please see Art’s comment below and my response to it for an explanation of these edits.

A couple of weeks ago—a couple of days before I posted about Abilene Christian University’s decision to provide iPhones or iPod touches to all incoming first-year students, making the iPhone a ubiquitous mobile learning tool—SumTotal Systems announced that the next release of its ToolBook software will add robust iPhone support. Support for other phones using platforms like Windows Mobile may come later, but iPhone support is first out of the box.

You can learn more at the ToolBook web site. The iPhone demos come across pretty well, though I don’t think that a Simpsons slide puzzle really demonstrates anything valuable about ToolBook’s best uses.

Unfortunately, ToolBook costs $2,795, so you’d need to work for an institution that was committed to ToolBook as an e-learning solution before you started thinking about deploying content for the iPhone or any other device using ToolBook for development.

I know that many Higgaion readers will have already seen Tyler Williams’ March 26 post, “The Mysterious Appearance of ‘Satan’ in English Translations of the Book of Job.” If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend that you do. Tyler gives an excellent brief treatment of why the English proper noun “Satan” shouldn’t appear in translations of the book of Job. Here’s the main “take-away point,” though you should read the whole thing:

When we turn to the book of Job, then, we do not find the full-blown figure of Satan. Instead, we find a celestial being who is part of Yahweh’s divine council, i.e., one of the “sons of Elohim”, who functions in the book of Job as a heavenly adversary. More specifically, in the book of Job, the satan fills the role of a prosecuting attorney. In this respect, the NJPS translation as “the Adversary” is perhaps the best possible.

Tyler posted this at a serendipitous time, just while my Religion 101 students are reading parts of Job for today’s class. When my students read about “Satan” in the NRSV—the standard translation used in introductory Bible text courses at Pepperdine—they immediately think of “the Devil,” without fail. I hate having to “correct” a translation before we can proceed with the discussion, but it’s necessary in this case. Now I can commend Tyler’s lucid explanation to my students in addition to what I share with them in class (which follows the same reasoning, but in less detail—I don’t go to all the other passages Tyler mentions, because I just don’t have the time in a 75-minute session on Job and Ecclesiastes).

I’ve been writing a bit lately (here and here) about Andrew Keen’s book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture (Currency, 2007). Among many other forms of “user-generated content” on the Internet, Wikipedia receives some of Keen’s harshest criticism.

Keen likes to compare Wikipedia, which basically has no editorial controls other than the unwashed masses of Wikipedia users and self-appointed contributors, with the Encyclopaedia Britannica, whose articles are (theoretically) vetted by expert editors and fact-checkers. However, in a now-famous, though disputed, study, Nature‘s editorial staff compared 42 science articles on Wikipedia with their Britannica counterparts, and found a similar number errors in each (160-something in Wikipedia, 120-something in Britannica). Thomas Chesney, a Lecturer in Information Systems at Nottingham University Business School, devised an interesting experiment whose results he reported in the freely-available online peer-reviewed journal First Monday. Chesney asked 55 research fellows, research assistants, and doctoral students (well, he asked 258 to do it, but only 69 agreed to do it and only 55 actually followed through) to rate the accuracy of various Wikipedia articles. Some researchers (Group 1) were assigned Wikipedia articles within their own areas of expertise; others (Group 2) were assigned Wikipedia articles at random, regardless of the researcher’s areas of expertise. Chesney found that Group 1 rated Wikipedia’s accuracy higher than those in Group 2. In other words, “the experts rated the articles as being more credible than the non–experts,” Chesney wrote. Remember, we’re talking about expert readers here, not expert writers. To be sure, Wikipedia is (or at least, has been) open to abuses, but on the whole, it’s got a decent, if not necessarily stellar, record.

But Wikipedia’s accuracy relative to Britannica is not really the point I want to address here (you can Google “Wikipedia Britannica accuracy” to learn more about that). Rather, I want to share one anecdote about usability. I stay home with my two boys on Thursdays; usually, I spend most of that time overseeing Nathan’s schoolwork, playing with Nicholas, and doing various maintenance tasks around the house and the yard (especially since Fridays are garbage pickup days). CAVA (Nathan’s school, the California Virtual Academy of Los Angeles) observes spring break this week, though, and I had occasion this morning to want to double-check my memory on some details related to the Amarna letters. (Biblicalist subscribers will soon known why.) Since Keen’s book has been fresh in my mind, and since I can access Britannica’s online version through the Pepperdine library web site, I decided to run a little test.

From Wikipedia’s main page, I searched for “Amarna letters.” This search took me to—big surprise—the Wikipedia article on the Amarna letters. Go over there yourself and just take a quick glance.

From Britannica’s main page, I searched for “Amarna letters.” This search returned a list of 24 articles, in this order:

Canaanite languages
Akhlame
Janin
Akhenaton: The decline and end of Akhenaton’s reform movement
Amenhotep III
Winckler, Hugo
Ashqelon
New states and peoples
Epigraphy: Ancient Mesopotamia
Lebanon: Origins and relations with Egypt
Bethlehem
Canaan
Syria: Early history
Hurrian language
Amenhotel IV (Akhenaton)
Anatolian language: Early research
Palestine: Late Bronze Age
Cuneiform: Hittite and other languages
Ankhesenamen
Bogazköy: Excavations
Epigraphy: The Hittite Empire
Anatolian language: Hittite
Anatolia: The Hittite empire to c. 1180
Egypt, ancient: From the New Kingdom to 332

Readers reasonably well-informed about the Amarna letters to begin with, and just needing a fact-check or two, will immediately see that most of these articles will mention the Amarna letters only in passing, probably only in one sentence. One other thing stands out immediately: my Wikipedia search returned an entire article focused on the Amarna letters as such, while my Britannica search returned a list of 24 articles, none of which focus on the Amarna letters as such.

For usability—as in “ease of finding what you’re looking for”—Wikipedia definitely wins this little unscientific, anecdotal test.

Premise Media, the production company behind the movie Expelled, issued a press release today addressing the attention they’ve received by excluding biologist PZ Myers from a screening at the Mall of America in advance of the film’s nationwide release on April 18.

Some of the statements made in the press release are startingly bizarre.

As I quoted in an earlier post on this topic, Mark Mathis, an associate producer of Expelled, wrote the following in an e-mail response to an inquiry by Inside Higher Education:

Yes, I turned Mr. Myers away. He was not an invited guest of Premise Media. This was a private screening of an unfinished film. I could have let him in, just as I invited Michael Shermer to a screening in Nashville. Shermer is in the film as well. But, in light of Myers’ untruthful blogging about ‘Expelled’ I decided it was better to have him wait until April 18 and pay to see the film. Others, notable others, were permitted to see the film. At a private screening it’s my call.

Unlike the Darwinist establishment, we expell no one.

Yet in today’s press release, Mathis’s company, Premise Media, quotes him as saying:

It is amazing to see the reaction of PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins and their cohorts when one of them is simply expelled from a movie.

So yesterday, Mathis said “we expell [sic] no one,” and today he says that he had PZ “expelled”? Care to change your story again, Mr. Mathis?

The Premise press release also continued to try to portray Myers, Dawkins, and other attendees a “gatecrashers”:

EXPELLED was screened for a select Minneapolis grass roots audience on Thursday night. Dr. Myers and noted atheist Dr. Richard Dawkins were not sent invitations to the screening from the producers. Nevertheless, they acquired access to a proprietary online RSVP site, along with a group of other atheists.

I can’t tell whether Premise believes its own spin or is just living in an alternate universe. Invitations may not have been sent to Myers or Dawkins, but a general invitation to the entire Internet-using public appears prominently on the Expelled movie web site. Since when does the entire online population constitute a “select … grass roots audience”? And by the way, after Myers (using his real name) completed the online registration form, he received a confirmation e-mail—not an e-mail or other communication from the producers saying “please stay away,” but an e-mail confirming his attendance.

And while this attempt to make Myers and Dawkins look like party-crashers is going on in the press releases, Mathis is telling his friends a different story. ID advocate Denyse O’Leary reproduced on her blog an e-mail from Mathis claiming, “I banned pz because I want him to pay to see it. Nothing more.”

So when he’s talking to O’Leary, Mathis just wanted to shake PZ down for $7.50, but when he’s talking to the press, PZ was a party-crasher? Care to change your story again, Mr. Mathis?

Although I sympathized with and supported the Writers Guild of America in its recent strike, the strike did leave me and many other iTunes Store customers holding “season passes” (subscriptions) to television shows that did not deliver the expected number of episodes for the 2007–2008 season.

About a week ago, Apple announced pro-rated refunds—in the form of iTunes store credit—for customers thus affected. My refund amounted to $16.36 in iTunes Store credit (that’s almost enough for two full music albums, or eight episodes of a different television show) plus two video credits that I can trade in for television shows, music videos, or short films.

Add this to the list of reasons why I count myself a satisfied Apple customer.

I just finished wrapping presents for my son’s birthday; he turned 10 on March 13. I’m about to stuff my sons’ Easter baskets.

You’re thinking I’m running a bit behind?

Four weeks ago, my wife’s 91-year-old grandmother fell and hurt herself, and had to be hospitalized for a time. Three weeks ago, my wife and sons flew to Alabama to visit her in her convalescence and try to help out with her care. Thus they celebrated my son’s tenth birthday at grandma’s house, and celebrated Easter there as well.

But they’ll be coming home tonight! And then it’s my turn to play birthday dad and Easter bunny.

Events that I did not foresee threw me off my stride earlier today, but nothing can ruin this Monday for me.

I will see my wife and kids again in about nine hours.

Those could be the nine longest hours of my life. Or the nine shortest, considering how much housecleaning I should try do to before then …

The following landed in my inbox a few moments ago:

From: Jim West [e-mail address removed]
Date: March 24, 2008 9:22:55 AM PDT
To: biblical-studies@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [biblical-studies] list business
Reply-To: biblical-studies@yahoogroups.com

I have removed Chris Heard from the list. I’m no longer willing to tolerate his personal, vindictive, idiotic vendetta. The one thing I’ve learned over the course of 47 years is that the best way of dealing with toxic persons is to have nothing to do with them. Hence, I refuse to have anything to do with Mr. Heard.

This is not a personal attack- it is a statement of fact- and I make it publicly in light of the fact that Mr Heard takes a perverse delight in distortion and I wish list members to hear, from my own ‘lips’ (so to speak) the reason for his removal.

Jim

–
++++++

Jim West, ThD

Since the message above was my first notice of expulsion from the Biblical Studies discussion list, I obviously have no opportunity to inquire further within the discussion list itself. The last message that I posted to the Biblical Studies list was dated March 4, 2008. It was a reply to Jim taking notice of the creation of the Biblicalist, and my entire text read as follows:

To be more specific, the moderators of the Biblicalist do not agree with the proposed bifurcation between “academic” and “confessional,” and created the Biblicalist as a forum in which individuals interested in academic biblical studies can engage in conversation without being asked to bracket their theological/confessional commitments.

Since there are no distortions there, and since that was my most recent post to the Biblical Studies list, Jim must be reacting to something here, on my blog. I’m not sure why anything I say on this blog should result in explusion from the Biblical Studies list; even if I were to use this forum to call Jim all sorts of horrible names, and insult his ancestry—neither of which I have done—I don’t think that should be germane to whether I’m allowed to subscribe to the Biblical Studies list or not.

But I am very curious to know what “distortions” spurred Jim’s decision. If you are curious about this, too, then please continue reading the extended post by clicking the link below. If you prefer not to sift through the boring details, just consider this admittedly defensive. Which of the following sets of actions suggests “vindictiveness” or a “vendetta”: (a) showing one’s disagreement with another by detailing the areas of disagreement, linking to that other’s blog, and allowing, even inviting, the other to interact in blog comments; or (a) showing one’s disagreement with another by disallowing the other’s comments on one’s blog, and by excluding the other from e-mail forums over which one has administrative control?
This post offers more content »

Inside Higher Ed runs a story today about Expelled, and gives some attention to last weekend’s event at the Mall of America. Mark Mathis, an associate producer of the film and reportedly the emcee at that screening, wrote the following in an e-mail reply to IHE‘s inquiry (italics added):

Yes, I turned Mr. Myers away. He was not an invited guest of Premise Media. This was a private screening of an unfinished film. I could have let him in, just as I invited Michael Shermer to a screening in Nashville. Shermer is in the film as well. But, in light of Myers’ untruthful blogging about ‘Expelled’ I decided it was better to have him wait until April 18 and pay to see the film. Others, notable others, were permitted to see the film. At a private screening it’s my call.

Unlike the Darwinist establishment, we expell no one.

Wait … did I read that right? “Yes, I turned Mr. Myers away. … Unlike the Darwinist establishment, we expell [sic] no one.”

Huh?

Recently, a well-known biblicablogger who really despises Wikipedia took notice of a Newsweek article about expert-driven alternatives to Wikipedia. The article quoted Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture (Currency, 2007), which I recently finished reading (see here for a brief comment on chapter 1). Apparently enthused by Keen’s description of Wikipedia content as “crap,” this biblicablogger declared,

I don’t know who this Andrew Keen is, but I like him! Even biblical studies and theology have been infected by the ‘cult of the amateur’ and we have all paid the price for it- with stuff like Simcha and Cameron’s nonsense as just one example among hundreds.

Most Higgaion readers will know that I too have harshly criticized some of Simcha Jacobovici’s team-ups with James Cameron on biblical topics, so to that extent I certainly occupy common ground with the fellow quoted above.

However, having also actually read Keen’s book (rather than just a “sound bite” in a Newsweek article), I find the above quotation deeply ironic, because Keen also harshly criticizes a number of activities in which bloggers in general—including the blogger quoted above—engage on a regular basis. In The Cult of the Amateur, Keen blasts away at all forms of user-generated content on the Internet. Keen savages bloggers who report news, but don’t have journalism degrees; Internet users who offer movie reviews, but are not employed by established media outlets as movie reviewers; online commentators who publish their political opinions but don’t have political science degrees; anyone who writes on the Internet about sports but doesn’t work for pay as a sports journalist—you get the idea. Yet almost all bloggers, including the one quoted above, offer such comments and opinions on a regular basis. If you want to offer opinions about the news, entertainment media, sports, politics, or anything else but you don’t funnel those opinions through the editorial staff of a newspaper, radio station/network, or television station/network, Keen would call you an “amateur” and would say that you are killing our culture.

Keen particularly emphasizes training and editorial review as important controls on published content. Thus, he lambasts not only Wikipedia contributors, but also folk who post homemade videos on YouTube or disseminate their books through Lulu. The biblicablogger quoted above arguably has a stronger claim than Simcha Jacobovici to expertise in matters related to the use of biblical narrative in historical reconstruction. However, if that gentleman were to film himself offering a point-by-point critique of The Jesus Family Tomb, and were to post that video on YouTube or on his own blog, Keen might very well criticize our biblicablogger rather than Jacobovici! After all, Jacobovici is a professional, properly credentialed filmmaker, he spent millions of dollars on his documentary, and his film passed editorial muster at the Discovery Channel. Until this happens, of course, we can’t know for sure, but such an outcome would be consistent with Keen’s overall approach.

Now I realize that certain aspects of what I have written above might be taken as sniping at a fellow biblicablogger, but here’s the important take-away point: a rush to praise can be as ill-advised as a rush to criticize. Keen thinks almost as ill of bloggers as he does of Wikipedia contributors, so it’s odd to find praise for him on a blog that violates so many of Keen’s “bloggers ought nots”—violations that most bloggers, including biblicabloggers like myself and the gentleman quoted above, commit quite frequently. Biblicabloggers, no matter how much you may hate Wikipedia, Andrew Keen is not in your corner.

Oh, here’s another Keen irony: I listened to the audiobook version of The Cult of the Amateur during several commutes to and from Pepperdine. The audiobook was read aloud by—wait for it—Andrew Keen himself, who, as far as I know, has no other audiobook narration credits to his name, nor any formal training in oratory or the oral interpretation of literature. Since my bachelor’s degree was in human communication, with an emphasis on public speaking, and since I make my living by teaching college students, which involves a lot of public speaking, and even, yes, since I listen to a great many audiobooks, I think I have sufficient expertise to say that Keen’s reading was amateurish and an unpleasant aesthetic experience.