It was absolutely delightful to spend time in Regensburg, a lovely historic city that I had never visited before, as the Society for New Testament Studies gathered there for this year’s meeting. I arrived early for a pre-conference featuring scholars from Eastern and Central Europe, which I am eager to support given my connection with this part of the world. In my family tree there is a Slovak theologian, which makes for another connection in addition to my connection with... Read more
I had the opportunity to have a really interesting conversation on Reddit about LLMs and reasoning. The person who wrote the original post expressed surprise and frustration that ChatGPT says things that are incorrect and then apologizes. I wrote, “It imitates speech. It has no mechanism for recognizing facts or information. They just happen to be woven into the speech patterns it is imitating. That you find what it does surprising makes me suspect you may not be aware of... Read more
Many educators continue to grapple with the place of technologies like AI image generators in an educational context. Here is an example of how they can be used for educational purposes. If you Google “Mary Magdalene” and click on the image tab, you will see a lot of art depicting the red haired penitent former prostitute. See my earlier post on the fact that this misrepresents Mary Magdalene, with the story of a student interacting with ChatGPT on the subject.... Read more
Here is something I did not expect to encounter today: the claim that ChatGPT can interpret speaking in tongues. ChatGPT Can Interpret Speaking in Tongues? For those who may not be familiar with the phenomenon and practice that is found in Pentecostal and charismatic churches, speaking in tongues refers to ecstatic speech that is produced in an altered state of consciousness. Although the articles I link to above claim that ChatGPT told someone they were speaking ancient Sumerian, I... Read more
CFP: Call for Essay Proposals July 2025 Interpreting the Hunger Games Prequels: A New Generation (Working title) Scholars, authors, and related professionals are invited to submit chapter proposals for a forthcoming edited volume interpreting Collins’ two Hunger Games “prequel” novels from a wide array of educational perspectives and disciplinary lenses. Following immediately on the heels of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Scholastic Publishing most recently shocked the Hunger Games fandom with the release of a second prequel, Sunrise... Read more
Being appropriately skeptical is an important tool in the toolbox of the academic, but scholarship is not merely skepticism. I explain this in my latest article in The Bible and Interpretation, and thought that I should share it here so that subscribers to my blog are made aware of it and get a chance to read it. Skepticism of Scholarship As I consider my own journey into and through academia, the most fundamental shifts that I have undergone pertain to... Read more
After a serious spoiler warning to hopefully send anyone who wants to avoid spoilers running for their lives and averting their gaze, I begin this post with the biggest mystery of the episode but by no means the only one, namely whether the credits saying “Introducing Billie Piper” is significant and if so in what way. Saying that she was mentioned is of course a spoiler, but for those who are still reading, who either don’t care about spoilers or... Read more
It is hard to say that any Doctor Who episode with a seemingly one-off villain or mystery stands out as worthy of revisiting, yet I suspect that if fans had been polled, the episode “Midnight” would have been chosen by many. Even if that is not the case, it was certainly a memorable episode, and so the episode “The Well” was particularly engaging to fans who have been watching for at least since the David Tennant era. Those who started... Read more
It is strange to be commemorating those who lost their lives opposing tyranny as the nation veers increasingly into autocracy. I have been thinking a lot recently about Romania, having lived there for three years and visited many times before and since then. It is the country with a recent history of dictatorship in which I have spent the most time. Of course, it is easy to forget that other places I have lived, such as Ireland and England, and... Read more
The Story and the Engine is the latest episode of Doctor Who, and I’m once again exploring the episodes of this season out of order. Perhaps a better way to put it, given the focus of this episode, is to say that I’m not sticking to the narrative sequence of the story. As always, when an episode engages with religion, it gets my attention and calls out for commentary. Stories about Stories This episode is yet another in a... Read more
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