Ten commandments of blogging...?

Ruth Gledhill notes on her blog that the Evangelical Alliance is about to publish the Ten Commandments of Blogging. They are apparently the work of the EA's church mission director Krish Kandiah:

1. You shall not put your blog before your integrity.
2. You shall not make an idol of your blog.
3. You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin.
4. Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog.
5. Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes.
6. You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings.
7. You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind.
8. You shall not steal another person’s content.
9. You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger.
10.You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking. Be content with your own content.

Given my last post, I am obviously delighted to see no. 8!!

But I think a bit more humour might also have been appropriate too. Is blogging really meant to be this negative? Not to mention, this dull, serious, and honourable? Hope not :)

Just depressing...

How depressing is it when you put your published essays on-line hoping to get Google to pick them up in searches only to find that they then begin to appear on links to essay writing web-sites! Still, if any of my students try to use them like that there is a reasonably good chance I might just recognise my own work.... :)

Thinking about the difficulties of tracing the impact of the Bible on events and ideas is one thing that occupies me professionally. But I can't help wondering if some of our current problems with plagiarism have something to do with Harry Potter. That boy may have been the chosen one, but he and his witless mate, Ron 'can I copy your work' Weasley, should have been chucked out of school for cheating on their assignments long before book 7 began. At one point, if I remember rightly, J K Rowling has anti-plagiarism quills for exams, but that is not when you need them. You need them when Hermione is handing over her latest script to her cheating mates. What role models!!

Other than that I quite enjoyed the Potter books....

Essays on-line updated

A number of my essays and articles are now available on-line through my University web-page.

New Testament

'The Hermeneutics of Fictional Black and Factual Red: The Markan Simon of Cyrene and the Quest for the Historical Jesus', Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 4.2, (2006) 139-54.

'On the Life and Death of Joseph of Arimathea', Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 2 (2004), 29-53.

'The Words of Gamaliel (Acts 5:38-9) and the Irony of Indeterminacy,' JSNT 68 (1997) 23-49.

Old Testament

" 'Outing' Qoheleth: On the Search for Homosexuality in the Wisdom Tradition", Theology and Sexuality, 12.2, (2006) 181-202.

‘A Man of Honour, A Man of Strength, A Man of Will? A Canonical Approach to Psalm 137’, Didaskalia 16, (2005) 41-68.

Reception History

'When is a Jew Not a Jew? Adventures of a 1st Century Pharisee in 4th Century Antioch and Constantinople', in M-L Luxemburg (ed.), Proceedings of the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, Vol. 10 (September 2005-August 2006) (Bath: Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, 2007).

Charismatic Hermeneutics

'The Gamaliel Principle,' in The Mark of the Spirit' A Charismatic Critique of the Toronto Blessing (ed. L.K Pietersen; Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998), 92-121.

'The Fourth Wave and the Approaching Millennium: Some Problems with Charismatic Hermeneutics,' Anvil 15 (1998) 169-80.

A response to the Toronto Blessing that is just as valid today because charismatic Christians learn exceptionally slowly (if at all)

I've put a couple more published essays on-line from the days when I cared about charismatic Christianity enough to argue about it.

'The Gamaliel Principle,' in The Mark of the Spirit' A Charismatic Critique of the Toronto Blessing (ed. L.K Pietersen; Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998), 92-121.

'The Fourth Wave and the Approaching Millennium: Some Problems with Charismatic Hermeneutics,' Anvil 15 (1998) 169-80.

Sadly they are still applicable today because it seems that no one in that tradition has learned anything over the last ten years. Pity.

My last word on the subject - ever.