Nick and I introduce ourselves. If I think of some material to add I will update this blog.
Friday, January 22, 2021
S1E0 Technology and the Human Purpose - Trailer
In this first episode Brian made a note that in the Bible cities and temples are intimately linked. This is obvious but overlooked. Curiously Iain Provan makes it a podcast and then forgets about it when writing. An example of the difference of speaking to an audience and writing.
https://www.gospelconversations.com/talks/the-ancient-near-eastern-context
If you want to just start with the cities bit it begins at 26 mins. But listen to the whole talk to get into the ancient world view.
Babylon in it's time was a temple complex and centre for government administration. Indeed what was the founding myth of Babylon.
....
"in order to settle the gods in the dwelling of [their] hearts' delight,
He created mankind"(1).
In other words humans are the slave class for building a city for the dwelling of the gods.
Egypt had its own massive temples.
What are Temples, amongst other things they are the presence of the gods.
Later in the Bible, we see the link between Jerusalem and Yahweh's Temple. Finally at the very end of the Bible we again see this combination between Temple imagery and city imagery.
If we go beyond the Bible and the Ancient Near East (ANE) we still see the link between cities and temples, think about meso and south America (2).
(1) p1. Leick, G. (2001) Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City. Penguin Books.
(2) McClellan III, J. E. and Dorn, H. (2006) Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction. John Hopkins Press, Baltimore.
Friday, January 15, 2021
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
New Podcast coming
Over the years this blog has been a repository for my rather random thinking as I learn and think about technology within the Biblical narrative. It has been a challenging road to sort out what I know about technology, then compare it with how Christians often talk about the subject. Then being forced as I listen to scholars with emerging ways of altering how we think about the text reframe what we thought about the text. People like Professors John Walton and Rikk Watts and Iain Provan have been doing what N T Wright did for New Testament scholarship. Deeply contextualising the scriptures in a particular time and place actually liberates it to shape lives today in ways that I believe are more powerful than the well worn approaches of the past.
As I begin to develop more solid thoughts on technology within a Biblical narrative, this is advance notice that a podcast is coming.
Hope you get the chance to tune in.
Hope you get the chance to tune in.
Technology and the Human Purpose.
So for the foreseeable future I will be giving this blog over to information regarding each episode.
Watch for the logo.
Brian.
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