Sampler Platter: Friday, September 19, 2014

Here's a sampling of some of the things I've been reading and reviewing this week.  The hope is that these bite-sized sections of books, articles, blog posts, etc will stand on their own and be beneficial in-and-of-themselves.  But I also hope that some of you will like these excerpts enough that they pull you into the larger work from which they've been taken.

Let's start sampling: 

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Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (Vol 1), rev.  HarperOne, 2010.  pp. 38-39, italics added:

"...it is certain that some of the apostles - particularly Peter, John, and Paul - did travel proclaiming the gospel and supervising the church that had been founded, either by them or by others.  Perhaps other apostles, such as Thomas, did likewise.  But....[i]n truth, most missionary work was not carried out by the apostles, but rather by the countless and nameless Christians who for different reasons - persecution, business, or missionary calling - traveled from place to place taking the news of the gospel with them." 

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Craig Blomberg, "Wasn't the Selection of Books for the Canon Just Political?" in Can We Still Believe the Bible? An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions.  Brazos Press, 2014.  p. 81-82:

"..the sixty-six books of the Protestant canon of the Bible were well chosen....the books in the Protestant canon of Scripture are far more than the product of the winning factions in Christian history.  While debates may continue between Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox with respect to the Old Testament Apocrypha, there are no significant debates left in any major branch of Christianity concerning New Testament books, and there is no reason to turn to the ancient gnostic or New Testament apocryphal texts for credible alternatives." 

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Jeanne Whalen, "Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress" at online.wsj.com (updated Sept 16, 2014): 

"Slow reading advocates seek a return to the focused reading habits of years gone by, before Google, smartphones and social media started fracturing our time and attention spans. Many of its advocates say they embraced the concept after realizing they couldn't make it through a book anymore.

"'I wasn't reading fiction the way I used to,' said Meg Williams, a 31-year-old marketing manager for an annual arts festival who started the club. 'I was really sad I'd lost the thing I used to really, really enjoy.'

"Slow readers list numerous benefits to a regular reading habit, saying it improves their ability to concentrate, reduces stress levels and deepens their ability to think, listen and empathize....

"The benefits of reading from an early age through late adulthood have been documented by researchers. A study of 300 elderly people published by the journal Neurology last year showed that regular engagement in mentally challenging activities, including reading, slowed rates of memory loss in participants' later years."

Click here to see the full post from which this excerpt was taken.  Please note the usual disclaimer, that my recommendation of this post is not necessarily an endorsement of everything else on the site where this was posted.