I am currently en route from Boston to East Tennessee. I had a chance on the train to listen to some more Bible-related podcasts, so while I have a layover in the Charlotte airport I thought I would take the time to write up reviews of these podcasts.

The first is A Word from the Word, a two minute podcast that describes itself as “[m]uch more than a devotional - it’s a Bible-based truth revealed through credible, reliable study.” It is produced by the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida. The podcast features Dan Hayden, who has a master’s of theology from Dallas Theological Seminary and a D.Min. from Baptist Bible Seminary.

The episode I heard focused on 2 Timothy 3:1-4. He focuses on those things that people will love in the last days, and singles out love of self, love of money, and love of pleasure. He says that these are all combinations with the Greek word philos, which he says is the Greek word for emotional love. There are other characteristics of people in the last times in these verses, but these are the only ones combined with philos. Hayden talks about a particular lure that he likes to use when fishing, a rotating three hook lure that always has one of its hooks pointing up. He says Satan uses such a lure, with love of self, money, and pleasure as the hook.

This podcast is a fairly standard devotion, meaning it takes a particular passage and then offers a devotional that is vaguely related to the passage. Satan, of course, is not mentioned in this passage, and in fact is not mentioned in 2 Timothy at all. This is an idea that Hayden is pulling into the passage.

The second podcast I heard was The BreadCast, listed on iTunes as “[a] reflection on the Sunday Readings and Solemnities of the Roman Catholic Church.” It is done by James Kurt and is based on his book Our Daily Bread: Exposition of the Readings of Catholic Mass. His book’s website gives the following biographical information:

James Kurt lives much as a hermit in the city in Jersey City, New Jersey. He spends about six hours a day in prayer, including Catholic Mass, Liturgy of the Hours, full Rosary, Stations of the Cross, meditation on Scripture and the writings of the saints, and silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. He works another five or six hours on his writing.

The podcast is read in a rather breathy voice, beginning with a chanted song. The content is somewhat scattered. In the episode I heard, I wasn’t sure what passage he was discussing. He seems to be starting with the Gospel, but quickly moved to talking about Paul. It could be that knowing which texts were being used would make the podcast clearer, but the texts are not even listed on the website.

Finally, I listened to one called The Bible Study Podcast. Of these three, this is definitely the best, although I would still not call it a great Bible study. The podcast usually focuses on particular passages, with the authors working their way through books of the Bible (Romans and the Gospel of John in particular), although they also do topical studies sometimes. I could not find any biographical information about the guys who produce the podcast (Justin, Toby, and MattB), but a doctrinal statement on their website is Calvinistic and espouses inerrancy.

The episode I sampled was a fifteen-minute episode on John 1:14-18. The podcaster simply walks people through the verses and explains what they mean. It is not exactly a deep study, but it does stick to the text for the most part. The host does not seem to have training in the Bible beyond what you would receive in a local congregation, but it is difficult to draw a definite conclusion based on one podcast.

One suggestion I would have for the host concerns the prayer requests he gives out at the beginning of the podcasts. While I realize his father will appreciate the prayers, I am not sure he would want the audience to be told so much about his rash. I know as a listener that I would have preferred the prayer request to be for a general medical condition without details.

Because this podcast is produced by several different hosts, I decided to sample one of the other hosts. I chose Matt’s discussion of biblical inerrancy, which is the first (and so far only) podcast in their “Contradictions in the Bible” series.

Matt focused on several passages where he says Jesus discussed the Bible. The first one, the temptation narrative, merely establishes that Jesus accepted the authority of the OT, since he quotes it against Satan. He then examines Matthew 22:23ff., where Jesus debates the Sadducees. Matt says Jesus corrects their error with Scripture that he saw as inerrant, which means that we should accept inerrancy as well. Of course, this is an incredible leap of logic that misses several steps in the syllogism. Nothing that Jesus says in this passage can be construed as supporting inerrancy.

Thinking he has firmly established the truth of inerrancy, Matt goes on to address some of the contradictions. He sets up several straw men, such as the supposed objection that the word inerrancy never occurs in the Bible. This he addresses by claiming that, like the concept of the Trinity, inerrancy is taught implicitly instead of explicitly. He also addresses the idea that the Bible is inerrancy in spiritual matters but not historical or scientific. He rejects this idea, and points out that Jesus accepted the historical accuracy of the Bible. Nothing he says is a particularly strong argument for inerrancy.

He goes on apply inerrancy to how we should approach contradictions. Since inerrancy is an a priori proposition for him, he says that we should assume that we simply don’t understand the passage. He says we should assume Scripture to be innocent until proven guilty, but if something proves the Bible guilty, it should be set aside by assuming that the Bible is still innocent but we don’t understand how.

All in all, The Bible Study Podcast seems to be a much better podcast when it sticks to reading the text and not when it jumps into bad theology.

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