Random

• Our PIBC colleague Ned Farnsworth sent me a link to the story about the archaeological find of a pottery scrap with a Hebrew text inscription from somewhere in the 1000 BC era. That would be about the time of King David. And at 3,000-years-old it is the oldest Hebrew text yet recovered. ~ link

• Bob Smietana has written a good story about a church which went through a major pastoral blow up and ended up coming out of it at a higher level of health -- in spite of the loss of people. ~ link

• Mark Roberts has a very positive review of the ESV Study Bible. ~ link

• Google has started indexing all the .pdf files online ~ link

• Ben Witherington on the architecture of the postmodern mind -- part 3 ~ link

• We had four trick-or-treaters -- a 400% increase over last year. I'm sure it's related to the economy.

• I'm not terribly worried about the demonic origins of the day. Halloween has been so homogenized through the influences of the market that it has as much to do with the reality of evil as modern Christmas has to do with the nativity of Christ. In most settings it is basically benign -- not even a shadow of the reality.

• GovGuam on the brink of bankruptcy? Or just more side-stepping? ~ link

• I'm skeptical about the reported correlation between switching to daylight savings time and increased heart attack rates. ~ link

• "Christian book publisher Zondervan is acquiring BibleGateway.com, a popular nonprofit Bible search engine, from Gospel Communications Inc. of Muskegon." ~ link

Zondervan is owned by HarperCollins, which is a subsidiary of News Corporation, which is a public company founded by Rupert Murdoch, who is the company's chairman and CEO. It's interesting who it is that God uses to move his cause forward. Gospel Communications ran into financial trouble last year as the economy slowed and donations dropped.