If Commodus were a Christian

One of the things that struck me when reading [Azar] Nafisi’s account of [The Great] Gatsby trial is how many people treat the Bible as if it is on trial, believing that all they’re been asked for is an up-or-down vote about its value.
--Julia O'Brien

Some "Down"-voting Christian bibliobloggers in their call for their up-or-down vote (on people who read and value the Bible differently from the way they do):

If it [scripture] is not given the last word, then its authority has been vacated. Which is fine, for a non-believer.
--John Hobbins

As remarkable as it may sound, most biblical scholars are not Christians.
--Dan Wallace

it’s possible to read the Bible on its own terms, assimilate its truth claims, and come out on the other side a reconstructed dispensationalist, a reconstructed liberationist, feminist, etc. But that is a very different existential and intellectual adventure from the one Julia O’Brien advocates, that is, a reading of the Bible premised on a rejection of traditional claims about the Bible. It is also very different from the stance Joel Watts has chosen, that of an apologist who starts out from a fixed position and looks for evidence to support it.
--John Hobbins (again)

I do see this as depravity of the total sort purely and simply because it is a mockery of Christian practice in the same way that an upside down cross on ‘The Satanic Bible’ is a mockery of the Bible.... If it were a true representation of Christianity, I would become an atheist. Fortunately it isn’t, so I needn’t.
--Dr. Jim West

Professors are the most liberal group of people in the world, and it’s professors who are doing the popular modern translations of the Bible.
--Andy Schlafly

I wish [Robert] Alter was a Christian, I’d love to see what he could do with Romans.
--Charles P Dog