Trailer for The River Thief
More Friday Open Road
I am telling you, there is a good deal more of this every Friday at Daily Timewaster.
Recent Interview with “Cultures in Harmony“
I was recently interviewed by “Cultures in Harmony” on what American culture is.
They Grow Up Fast
Darren Doane just released a documentary–in conjunction with Samaritan Ministries (a biblical, non-insurance approach to health care needs)–which can be viewed here.
Tolkien and Lewis Spar via Text Message
Now here’s something you don’t see everyday…
The PC Study Bible
Here are some interesting and necessary thoughts on translation issues, particularly with regard to how they relate to the imperious demands of our surrounding culture.
What Wikipedia Calls Disambiguation
You may have noticed that there are two different lists you can sign up for here at Mablog. The first is in my right side bar, and is marked with the word Onslaught. The second (entirely distinct) list is at the bottom of every post, where it says “Have ‘Em Delivered.”
If you sign up for the first, you will be added to the Canon Press email list, which will provide you tidings of new releases and whatnot. You will also get six free e-books emailed to you, one a month. That’s Onslaught.
The second one subscribes you to a weekly summary of my blog posts. In addition to that, I will randomly send out stuff like a special sale of a particular title, available only to those who get word of it by this means. For those of you who attempted to sign up for this subscription and failed, this was most likely caused by me running over the specified number of names that Mail Chimp allows. I have fixed that, so if you sign up now it should work.
Another Angle on Plagiarism
Gervase Markham has given us an interesting take on plagiarism here. A lot more needs to be said, but he brings up some issues I hadn’t really thought about before. I was particularly interested in his argument from the “inter-textuality” found in Scripture. This is a good example of discussion that discusses, instead of trying to weaponize.
Having noted this, there is nothing here that alters what I have said about various plagiarism controversies in the past (see Controversy Library in the top menu bar), but there is a good deal here that could affect what some have said about it.
Bayly may have a point, though the article reads a little like: the ESV is wrong because they disagree with me. I have heard that the question over whether adelphoi in the plural means brothers or brothers and sisters is disputed by even those within the complementarian camp. I agree that a literal translation of old women fables would be understandable in English. One could argue whether arsenokoitai and malakoi can be jointly translated as homosexual. I prefer 2 words: say “sodomite” and “catamite”; but there cannot always be a single word for single word in translation. As to the… Read more »
Genesis is history, among other things. This is why: “The Bible is not a science textbook,” is an irrelevant argument.
Lewis wins. And no mention of the ring.
Excellent article on plagiarism. I think we need to distinguish plagiarism: passing off other’s work as your own; and copyright: making money from a work. He is correct about the authors of Scripture. Michael Patton said that ancients tried to pass off their work as written by others (pseudoepigraphia); moderns try and pass of others work as their own. The ancients wanted their ideas adopted; moderns want fame. We don’t have a clear framework because this is one of the few issues that the Bible barely, if at all, touches on. We perhaps could look to natural law? The attempt… Read more »
Thank you for your kind words. If God spares me, I have much to say about copyright, trademarks and patents as well :-)
It does seem true that the BIble is relatively silent (directly) on such matters. It’s also interesting, at least to me, that Gary North’s life’s work on economics, the incredible 31-volume “An Economic Commentary on the Bible” is almost entirely silent about it as well, despite the part of the economy involved in buying and selling words and ideas now being enormous.
You’re welcome. I have thought about these issues for some time. There are a few posts on copyright at my site I wrote a couple of years back that might offer some clarification. There are further posts on the concept of information (there is a label) if necessary.
As far as the Bible addressing the concept of information and copyright I have considered toying with whether commands about gossip would be fruitful in addressing copyright. Though I haven’t really done anything with this yet.