A Seminar by Ben Witherington III

I have a number of theologians that I enjoy listening to - one of  them is Ben Witherington.  He is a prolific author and I have a long way to go to build up my library collection.  He also has a blog and appears from time to time on podcasts and other videos.

I came across a really interesting seminar in panel format on youtube that I wanted to share with you.  It is quite a long seminar (about 80 minutes) on Theology, Jesus and the Canon.  In truth, much of the time is spent discussing the canon and its reliability and authenticity.  There is a good Q&A discussion at the end as well.

As well as being highly informative, the three participants seem to be enjoying themselves and there is quite a bit of humour mixed in with the theology.  The theology itself is what I would call conservative, in other words, it fully supports the authenticity and reliability of the Bible as God's word.

I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did.

Welcome to Ikthus!

Hello and welcome to another of my blogs - this time dedicated to all things Christian.  My other blog "They Shoot Birds Don't They?" is purely designed to talk about my childrens book and also the world of self-publishing and e-marketing.

There is nothing worse than a blog clog so I have decided to set up a new one where I can post various things about the Christian life, whether it be passing on an article, a favourite website, a video, a book review, some random thoughts on a topical event, or even a verse for the day.

The title of this blog should be fairly self explanatory, at least for people who know that icthus is the Greek word for fish.  A sign of a fish was used by Christians in the first century A.D. to identify themselves as such to each other without being identified and persecuted by the Romans.  Why a fish?  They used the Greek word as an acronym, which in English is  JESUS-CHRIST-GOD's-SON-SAVIOUR.   It has been used by Christians for the last 2,000 years although these days for the opposite reason - not to keep their faith a secret but to let people know about it!

Anyway, I was looking for an easy blogname that people could remember and easily find again when I told them the address.  I was going to try and be fancy and have the title eklekticthos but decided that was far too hard to spell and remember!  I have retained some of it in the title using the letter "k".  The original idea was a play on the Greek word eklectos (chosen/elect) with eclectic to emphasise that this blog was  a collection of  a wide, random assortment of chosen Christian things.   Too clever by half, though!

Anyway, I hope that whatever finds its way onto this blog in the coming days and weeks is of help and interest to people that find their way here...