As I announced last week this blog will be the central hub for blog tour discussing T. Michael Law’s forthcoming When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (see Forthcoming book blog tour). Those who interested in reading the book (or, potentially interested) may want to read the interview Law did with Peter Enns over on Enns’ blog: Here’s Something about the Bible of the First Christians I Bet Many of You Didn’t Know.
Also, here are some other things I’ve read lately that may pique your interest:
Andrew King, 2013 Biblical Studies Carnival
Scot McKnight, The Serpent was Right
Chris Tilling, Beyond conservative, liberal, or progressive Bible reading (w. a follow-up post to come)
Ben _____, The Creation Museum: 27 Million Dollars of Bad Exegesis
the archives near Emmaus 
I’m surpirsed at Scot McKnight’s piece. They did die . They lost the “spiritual life” they had fellowshipping with God that instant.
The serpent is never right.
Did you read the post? Scot does mention that as an optional interpretation, but adds another one to the mix where the serpent knew that God would be graceful. The ambiguity of the texts seems to allow either interpretation in my opinion.
Didn’t read it thoroughly enough obviously.
Within the biblical narrative, I don’t think the serpent got anything right as far as interpreting God or the scriptural text.
With me, the historic/narrative context trumps exegesis and the narrative starts with the serpent being a goof and ends with him being a goof. It’s hard to imagine a fallen and unrepentant creature with that knowledge of God’s grace like Scot’s exegesis option allows here.
Not disagreeing on the exegesis, it just doesn’t fit in the broad narrative context, IMO.
BTW, that article on the creation museum was awesome and the article Dr. Heiser wrote he alluded to was as well. I’m a little surprised more folks like Dr. Enns don’t consider Heiser’s view here as opposed to assuming Adam is a myth.
Personally, I always wondered about “the land of Nod” and the “other people” Cain feared. They don’t seem to fit in the narrative if the traditional view holds.
Even if one postulates that the narrator presented the serpent as a creature who knew God would be graceful, this doesn’t make the snake a good being, since the serpent intended for Adam and Eve to rebel, knowing that it would ruin their present status before God in Eden. The ambiguity of Genesis 1-3 (even 1-11) is what makes the text so interesting to interpret. The silence of the texts say as much as the text themselves at certain points.