I feel that the events of Genesis 6 (especially the Nephilim) is probably best understood against the background of the Watcher Narrative. This can be found in the Book of Enoch, chapters 1 to 36 and you can read it online here.
For some more information on the Enoch literature in general, have a look at the lecture from James C. VanderKam of University of Notre Dame on the St Andrews site.
(image from the Library of Congress)
As promised, here is my brief rush through Revelation from a socio-political perspective: enjoy.
Persian Fire by Tom Holland give a good introduction to the wider history of the Ancient Near East. It deals with the Persian empire and the beginnings of the rise of Greece and was published in 2006 by Abacus.
You might also be interested in an episode of In Our Time which deal with Babylon - you can listen again to it here. Also worth a listen in the programme on Zoroastrianism.
The short books I mentioned are:
Bauckham, R (1993) The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: CUP)
Laird, M (2006) Into the Silent Land: The Practice of Contemplation (London: DLT)
Wright, Tom (1992) Who Was Jesus? (London: SPCK)
The website on creationism (thanks Becca) is Answers in Genesis. It a well put together presentation of the creationist view.
The section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on purgatory can be seen here. A classic medieval outworking of the doctrine can be seen in Dante.
For Process Theology, have a look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Dan - the images I used for the slides are from NASA.
Although to know [God] be life, and joy to make mention of his name yet our soundest knowledge is to know him as indeed he is, neither can know him: and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence
Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, I.2.2
For Dan:
The existentialist philosopher I mentioned yesterday is Søren Kierkegaard, and much of his writing is available online.
You can view the Roman Catholic Catechism here and the section dealing with the role of tradition is here. An Eastern Orthodox perspective can be found on the Greek Orthodox Achdiocese of America’s website.
You might (or might not!) be interested in this article on the enlightenment from Kant’s perspective.
If there’s anything I’ve forgotten, please remind me in the comments.
The assignments for CTM210 can be got from here.
We spent some time on Monday discussing the authority of scripture and the development of the canon in the early church. You’ll find all sorts of websites on this issues, most of them from a Protestant or Roman Catholic point of view, but I’d like to steer you towards an Orthodox viewpoint.
Our Life in Christ is an excellent podcast which tackles plenty of the points of tension between Orthodox and Evangelical Christianity. They had a series of podcasts on the issue of Sola Scriptura and posted some notes online which can be found here. They have taken an argument from an evangelical site (CRI) and put their response in blue (OLIC).
As always, this represents only one point of view but it is a good way of getting a feel for the arguments.
The Bible Style Guide is a reference text designed specifically for those working within the media industry. It provides a crash course in the Bible for busy journalists, broadcasters and bloggers.
Whilst the guide will hopefully tell you nothing new, it is interesting to see the commonly held perceptions of the Bible which are addressed here.
