The Blog of Dr. James F. McGrath, Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University, Indianapolis
“The Crimson Horror” brings together a team of characters to tackle a somewhat stereotypical evil, but with some interesting religious elements to explore for those interested in the intersection. Spoilers ahead! The story is set in the Victorian Era, with Vastra, Jenny, and Strax providing heroism and laughs. It begins with a mystery – dead [...]
Today in my Bible class the topic was apocalyptic literature – Daniel and Revelation. The student who presented included a segment of the above video on the number of the beast, and I thought it was worth sharing with a wider audience. I now have my lecture on this topic online, so that we can [...]
Helen Bond has a new article in The Bible and Interpretation, “Ten Things I Learnt about Jesus by Writing a Book about him.” It offers a nice, balanced overview of some key points related to both the methods and the conclusions of the scholarly quest for the historical Jesus. The book she is referring to is [...]
That’s what they are calling today, apparently. Leave a comment if you get why. At least no one seems to be predicting the date has some apocalyptic significance. Is that because people think that, whereas one dubious apocalyptic prediction in a month is fine, two would be crazy? UPDATE: Here’s another image that gives a [...]
If one looks online for sources discussing the date of the Book of Daniel (and a number of other Biblical texts where the same issues arise), one is bound to come across conservative works which inevitably accuse scholars who date those works later than they do of “anti-supernaturalism.” Unless one rejects the possibility of predictive [...]
The last class topic of the semester, this lecture begins with a bit of background about apocalyptic literature such as the Book of Daniel, covers general points about the Book of Revelation, and then tackles the number of the Beast, mentioning some prior proposed identifications both frivolous and serious.
Anthony Le Donne suggested on his blog (and in a recent conference paper) that a story in the Babylonian Talmud, in b. Menaḥoth 29b, might be the first science fiction story. In it, Moses time travels to Rabbi Akiba’s time. But is time travel enough to make a story science fiction? I’ve long pondered this topic, namely [...]
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