2015 Pepperdine Bible Lectureship iTunes Downloads

I know many readers are interested in listening to the presentations made at the Pepperdine Bible Lectureship just completed. Even if you were fortunate enough to attend, there were so many excellent presentations going on simultaneously, you may want to check out the podcasts.

There was a time that to get the presentations you had to buy a collection of CDs. Now it’s all online –and free! But it does require some prior knowledge of the iTunes world.

Listening and downloading

The easiest path in I’ve found works like this:

Start here. Although this looks like a page from which you can play the lectureships (140 at last count), you have to select “View in iTunes.” If you have iTunes on your computer, it will open the application (if necessary) and land you in the iTunes store on the iTunesU page for the 2015 PBL podcasts, with the lecture you originally selected highlighted.

If you don’t have iTunes, well, I don’t know how to avoid having to download the program, which I like, but it’s huge download and some may prefer other media players.

Either way, you wind up in iTunes at the iTunesU page for the lectureship. From there, it’s easy enough to select a presentation to listen or download to your iPhone, iPod, iPad, or other iTunes equipped device.

You play from the screen by clicking on the number in the far left edge (not obvious, I know). The “Get” command will download the sound file for later playback on your PC or other device.

Posting in a blog or Facebook

The links in the drop down menu next to “Get” don’t work. That is, if you try to post on Facebook a great lecture by Jeff Walling by clicking the Facebook option, the link just goes to the starting page that asks you to download or go to iTunes — with no connection to a particular lecture.

But there is a way to do it. You have to dig into the XML code. Click on this link. This will open a webpage with the XML code that has the direct links to each presentation.

For example, Dan Bouchelle’s lecture “May I Ask a Stupid Question?” may be found in this bit of code:

Just copy and paste the boldfaced portion into your blog, Facebook post, Twitter feed, etc. like any other URL link.

In WordPress, this pulls up a player, and depending on the browser, a right-click option to download to the local computer.

If anyone has a better idea, I’m more than open to it.

Incompleteness theorem

There are 140 lectures posted, the last I looked. Randy Elliot’s presentation on 1 Cor 14:34-37 does not yet appear. Nor does Nadia Bolz-Weber’s talk on confession. I know the Facebook crowd was looking forward to these. But it’s the weekend, and it’s a university, and I imagine we won’t see the full slate until Monday. Just guessing. Or we could start the paranoid conspiracy theorizing. That’s always uplifting.

I would add that it’s very common for there to be technical glitches in these things. AV and computer staff get a bit overwhelmed trying to tape and post so much material all at once. My own presentation a few years ago died somewhere on its way to the recording box.

Videos

The PBL YouTube channel is nothing but pre-event marketing materials. The podcasts are where the lectures are, and they are all audio. And that’s all fine with me, but I know some readers prefer videos. If there are any, I’ve not found them — but some readers may have recorded presentations on their cellphones (who could resist?). Maybe a few will pop up on the PBL Facebook page later.

Next Year

N.T. Wright will be speaking. N.T. Wright will be speaking!

Conclusion

I am very appreciative of Pepperdine’s willingness to put these on the Internet very quickly and very free of charge. It’s a great service to the Churches of Christ community.