African Christians don't read African authors - The same goes for Latin Americans.

This blog is written by a Latin American, so many things will have to do with how I see the world from a Latin American perspective.

Christianity Today has published an article that mentions how Africans are reading more christian American authors rather than authors from their own continent, that also write christian books. The article gives many reasons why authors from Africa don't feel compelled to write, but it also reflects the interest within the African community about prosperity gospel, and also about how much they know about the American type of Christianity, and how little they know about their own.

In Latin American, we suffer a similar thing. The prosperity Gospel teachers chew books out of the printer regularly. There's also a growing section of Christianity that are reading faithful Christian writers from the USA, Canada, Australia and Europe. This is good, but they don't go beyond that. Some, only read Reformed flavoured literature, and at times, only XVI century writers, that don't relate to the practical pastoral issues being faced in the continent.

This article, along with that particular whole issue of Christianity Today, opens us to the world of how diverse Christianity can be. It's not a sin to be different, if we are still faithful to the word of God.

Who is really a Jew?

There has been some debate of what constitutes a jew today. If you have heard the news, there's a far right Hungarian politician who found out that he has Jewish blood. So he stopped attacking Jews.

In my Latin American world, there are some who think they are Jews, because there heritage hints that they had a mother or father of Jewish ancestry.

There are also issues among Jews as to ascertain who is truly Jewish. So this is an ongoing issue.

I leave you this article from The Economist for you to ponder this issue.

If you want to be really serious about bible study, this are the languages you need to know

This comes via Jim West's Blog, that I am mostly enjoying (mostly because he doesn't like Pentecostals, but hey, nobody is perfect):

So, what languages must people know? I’m going to answer in parts-

Part One- Pastors

Pastors need to know the Biblical languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. At a minimum. No pastor worth his salt will ‘kiss the beloved through a sheet’ and come away satisfied and none can expound the biblical text without being able to read it.

Part Two- Old Testament Scholars

These folk need to know Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Eblaitic, and Greek.

Part Three- New Testament Scholars

Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, Coptic, and Latin

Part Four- Text Critics

These need to know the relevant ancient languages of the text they are examining. If an OT text, than all those which the OT scholar masters plus those of the NT scholar plus at least German and French. If a NT text critic then, frankly, many more (since the NT is attested in numerous languages from up to the 5th century CE).

All of the languages listed by section above are the bare minimum for each. It really is necessary to read one or more modern language as well so that one can keep up with developments in one’s field and not be shackled to the narrow parochialism so common of pastors and academics in North America.

Without mastery of the requisite languages, pastors will be deficient, and academics will be as well, incapable of understanding that which they profess to be explaining to others.

Therefore, I am in dire stribes, barely knowing Greek and rusty Hebrew. There's a lot to learn, apparently.

So when you see someone saying that they have a Doctorate in Theology, ask them if they at least know Koine greek. If they don't, they don't know what they are talking about.