Round the Sphere Again

Christian Carnival

• This week's Christian Carnival is at Pursuing Holiness.

Theology

• The Crusty Curmudgeon has a post on God's plan (or his will of decree), and he promises a future post on God's revealed will.
  
  
• I participated a little in this discussion of the image of God and how it relates to total depravity at Cerulean Sanctum. Go check out Dan's question and think about how you would answer.

Biblical Archeology

• You heard that the ossuary of James was a certain fake because the patina showed that the inscription was a modern forgery? Well, perhaps things aren't quite as certain as they seemed. Here's a summary of a report done by Professor Wolfgang E. Krumbein, of Oldenburg University, Germany, that disagrees with the earlier reports by Tel Aviv University Professor Yuval Goren and his colleague Avner Ayalon, which Professor Krumbein arrives at it's conclusion based on

  a series of errors, biases, mistaken premises, use of inappropriate methodology, mistaken geochemistry, defective error control, reliance on unconfirmed data, disregard of information (such as the cleaning and preservation actions performed [on the ossuary], and the use of a comparative isotope methodology despite the fact that the [James ossuary] inscription fail[s] to meet the cumulative prerequisite conditions for such tests and comparisons.

  HT: Real Clear Theology Blog

Questions

• So what name for girls has "made the fastest climb among all names in more than a century"? Terry Pruitt has the answer, and if you don't already know this, you'll never guess.
  
  
• Have you ever puzzled over the meaning of the letters and numbers on a vanity plate? There's a whole blog devoted to finding the true meaning of various Puzzle Plates.
  
  
• Is rebecca deal an indian name? Believe it or not, that is one of the searches that brought someone to this site this week.