It was just about a year ago that I wrote my first post about young earth creationism, and how dangerous I felt it was. My first post was entitled, “Why I am not Teaching This Year…and the Heresy of Ham,” In it I talked about how I was let go from a small Evangelical Christian School because I essentially did not adhere to Ken Ham’s young earth creationism. I was told I was not a “good fit” for the Biblical Worldview department, despite the fact that I not only had I taught Biblical Worldview for eight years, but I was the one who had developed all four courses of Biblical Worldview for the high school. That meant I was no longer a “good fit” for the very department and courses I had created.
It was a very painful experience, because I knew I had done nothing wrong. I wasn’t pushing evolution, or theistic evolution, or even young earth creationism in my classes. I did have one three-week unit for my seniors in which we looked at all the major views of the creation/evolution debate, but my goal was to have the students analyze and question each view, pure and simple. But apparently, because I personally disagreed with young earth creationism, that was grounds for my dismissal.
Over the past year, I have written quite a lot on this blog on not only young earth creationism, but also the new atheist movement, Biblical Studies, as well as some more personal stories. I’ve also worked on finishing my book that is now out, The Heresy of Ham, that makes the argument that not only is young earth creationism unscientific, but it is based on demonstrably wrong biblical exegesis. In addition, Ken Ham’s claims that Christians throughout Church history had always read Genesis 1-11 as literal history is absolutely false, plain and simple.
But if you read the end of my post, “Why I am not Teaching This Year,” you’ll see I had a few other goals for the year. In addition to finishing The Heresy of Ham (accomplished), I also wanted to publish my book, Getting Schooled, which is a humorous memoir of my crazy experiences as a high school teacher–I am happy to say that I completed that too, and it is available at Amazon.com. I said I also wanted to get closer to completing my translation of the Bible. Well, I have been able to get through a “rough translation” of the Old Testament, and am in the midst of polishing it up, little by little. Hopefully, I will have the Torah out within the next month or two.
I have been able to, though, go back through my translation of the New Testament, make a number of revisions, and correct a few mistakes. It is also available at Amazon.com. I title it: The New Testament: JAV (Joel Anderson Version)–not out of a sense of hubris, but actually as sort of an acknowledgement to the students of my class of 2001. For the four years I taught them Bible and English, occasionally sharing with them translations I had done of various passages, they were the ones who kept telling me I needed to translate the whole Bible. I remember one student in particular, Elliot Sagan, said I should call it “The JAV.” And so, hence the title.
I have also gone through a previous book of poetry I had written, and have also revised it a little. It is entitled Up Until August. It’s more of a personal project.
The other goal I had stated last year was to finish a Worldview book, entitled The Ways of the World, in which I trace the history of Western Thought and Philosophy. Well, I haven’t gotten to that. The rough draft I had last year is still a very rough draft. I eventually might finish it and try to publish it as a book, but for now I am leaning toward (at least at first) turning the chapters into various posts for this blog.
It certainly has been quite a busy year. We will see what this next year brings.
