On 20th December the BBC announced that it would be airing more religious programming, including a greater representation of all faiths. I heard this announcement when Nick Robinson interviewed James Purnell, BBC Directory of Radio Education and Religious Programming about it on the Radio 4 Today programme, which you can listen to here (from 1°21’34”

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] In our last post we observed that there is clear evidence that over the centuries a process of ‘harmonization’ of the Diatessaron text had occurred, whereby the text had accrued passages from the standard biblical text in the course of transmission. In this

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] In this third post in the series, we look at some more things we learn from the Diatessaron, a second-century harmony of the Gospels by Tatian. You can find a description of the Diatessaron, and of its author, in the first post in

News outlet betrays ignorance whilst claiming that “one in five Brits do not know Jesus Christ born on 25 December” On 6 December the Independent Online published an article which claimed, Christmas 2017: One in five Brits do not know Jesus Christ born on 25 December, study finds Despite ubiquity of nativity plays and Christian

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] In this post we continue to look at some things we learn from the Diatessaron, a second-century harmony of the Gospels by Tatian. You can find a description of the Diatessaron, and of its author, in the previous post in this series here.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] I recently finished reading an English translation of a second-century Christian work, the Diatessaron, by Tatian the Assyrian. In a new series of posts we look at twelve things the Diatessaron shows us about early Christianity and the New Testament Gospels. What is

“The goodness we have reached is a house built on piles driven into black slime.” “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven / All good children go to heaven.” So sang Paul McCartney in the Beatles’ 1969 song, ‘You Never Give Me Your Money.’ Now this may just be a silly little ditty. But the

BBC responds to accusation that it deliberately ignored the Reformation I recently sent a letter of complaint to the BBC regarding the lack of content on the BBC website about the important 500th anniversary of the Reformation. The letter I sent to them was as follows:— Mr. Graham Harter [address supplied] BBC Complaints PO Box

Four-year-old, irrelevant article is rehashed to churn up advertising revenue Yesterday (10th November) the Independent Online re-publicized “stunning claims” on Facebook that the “story of Jesus Christ was ‘fabricated to pacify the poor’, [according to] controversial Biblical scholar” — only to point to a news story which was printed in October 2013 and is now

‘Detective story’ about discovery of ‘new’ Mary Magdalene account gets fresh, undeserved airing via Facebook On Tuesday 31st October — the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation — the Independent Online celebrated by re-hashing and re-publicizing on Facebook an 18-month-old article about a discredited book by Professor Barrie Wilson and writer Simcha Jacobovici