Parchment & Pen Blog

The term “canon” refers to the accepted books of the Bible. The Protestant canon contains 66 books; other Christian traditions vary, adding a few books often referred to as the Deuterocanonical books (“second canon”) or the “Apocrypha.” A commonly accepted understanding among most Christians of all traditions is that the books that belong in the Bible [...]

The problem with many Evangelicals is that we can come dangerously close to worshiping the Bible. As Evangelical theologian James Sawyer once said in jest, we worship the Trinity: the Father, Son, and Holy Bible. Now, by this I do not mean we actually set the Bible up in a shrine in our house, throw it away [...]

1. Perhaps the number one myth about Bible translation is that a word-for-word translation is the best kind. Anyone who is conversant in more than one language recognizes that a word-for-word translation is simply not possible if one is going to communicate in an understandable way in the receptor language. Yet, ironically, even some biblical [...]

Dollar Sales 1. New International Version 2. King James Version 3. New Living Translation 4. New King James Version 5. English Standard Version 6. Holman Christian Standard Bible 7. New American Standard Bible 8. Common English Bible 9. Reina Valera 1960 10. The Message Unit Sales 1. New Living Translation 2. New International Version 3. [...]

(Lisa Robinson) In my first semester of seminary, I had to read Surprised by the Voice of God  by Jack Deere to complete a theological method paper for my Intro to Theology class.  I’ve been re-reading it in preparation to grade the same assignment. If you are not familiar with the book, Deere writes about [...]

I believe in inerrancy. This means I believe that there are no errors in the Bible. Of course, this comes with the usual disclaimers which say that we must be talking about the original manuscripts and we must be assuming that the Bible is being interpreted correctly. In other words, none of our Bible translations [...]

The Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura is one of the most misunderstood doctrines I know of. The misconceptions come not only from those who repudiate the doctrine (such as Roman Catholics), but also from those who affirm it. Here is a list of some things that sola Scriptura does not mean. Sola Scriptura does not [...]

Part 1 Part 2 A standard evangelical approach to dealing with the stylistic differences of, say, Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastorals from the rest of Paul’s letters, is to argue that the penman or secretary of these letters may have had a larger role than merely copying down via dictation what Paul said. Ehrman, however, [...]