An eclectic collection of news and views from the past week on faith, language, and literature, as well as other topics of interest.

John Dyer discusses how the internet has changed theological debate in an thought-provoking article for Christianity Today entitled “Not Many of You Should Presume to Be Bloggers.” I suppose I could attribute my own failure to write a full-length blog post this week to Dyer’s influence. It’s more likely, however, that four evenings straight of church functions played a bigger role.

The great wordsmith of of Canadian commentary, Rex Murphy, delivers a sophisticated and compelling article in The National Post which weaves together reflections on Ronald Rumsfeld’s memoirs and Israeli Apartheid Week. In the process, he asks why activists who feel so compelled to accuse Israel of human rights crimes are so silent on the more clear and undoubted violations of other nations. It’s all in “Rex Murphy: Alert me when we get to Saudi Arabian Gender Apartheid week.”

Okay, this one is actually from two week ago, but it’s still worth sharing anyway. Apparently C.S. Lewis’ long-lost translation of the Aeneid is not so lost after all. The translation, which was thought destroyed in a bonfire in 1964, was discovered spread throughout the papers Walter Hooper saved from that fire. Yale University Press is releasing it April 4 under the title C.S. Lewis’ lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile, edited by A.T. Reyes. Check out Reyes’ article about the fascinating work of stitching back together Lewis’ (regrettably incomplete) take on the epic at the Yale Books blog.

In other news of the long-lost rediscovered, a group of researchers has recently claimed to have found the city of Atlantis… in a swamp in Spain. If true, it’s a somewhat inglorious resting place for the great empire of which Plato speaks. For all the info, check out The Telegraph‘s story “Lost city of Atlantis ‘buried in Spanish wetlands.'” If memory serves, this is the third such discovery of Atlantis since 2001. Good advice when it comes to news of underwater cities: don’t hold your breath.

The newest New International Version is set to hit stores this month. Unlike the TNIV, which was offered alongside the much-loved 1984 version, this new edition is set to entirely replace the earlier translation. So if you’re a fan of the old NIV, you might want to pick up a couple of copies sooner rather than later. Christian Today highlights the transition in its article “Out with the old, in with the new.”

And finally this week, pop music broke when Ark Music Factory went viral: see the Globe and Mail’s interactive article “Best of the Worst: An Ark Music Factory primer.”