As a follow-up to my previous exchange with it, I asked ChatGPT what it would write if asked to provide a purely secular academic commentary on the parable of the Good Samaritan. That seemed a natural and logical place to go next. Here is what it gave me: Certainly, I’d be happy to provide a secular academic commentary on the parable of the Good Samaritan. In this analysis, I’ll focus on the narrative’s literary elements, historical context, and potential ethical... Read more
As I have thought about how to respond to and integrate ChatGPT into teaching, I came to realize that I had not previously adjusted my approach to assignments and grading in light of tools like Grammarly. But should I? Just because a tool can help fix grammar doesn’t mean the result is good, unless the tool is used well. So too with ChatGPT in producing anything like an essay. In short, my instinct is to treat ChatGPT and Grammarly the... Read more
In connection with my book What Jesus Learned from Women I was interviewed for an article that appeared in the Portuguese magazine Sabado. The title is “As mulheres mais importantes na vida de Jesus.” I thought it might be of interest to share the interview itself, of which only snippets end up being utilized in a given article. So here are the journalist’s questions and my answers: Who were the most influential women on Jesus’s life? Why? How would you... Read more
An article on IO9 used the same word I used for the ending of Good Omens Season 2, and since I don’t think that an emotion I felt as a viewer constitutes a spoiler since no plot points are revealed. As Linda Codega wrote, “the ending of season two is heart-wrenching.” The story on the way there is beautiful in so many ways. The show manages to poke fun at religion at its worst while problematizing the notion of genuinely... Read more
It is ironic that those whose deceptive marketing strategy is to claim they are “Bible-believing Christians” view denial of the inerrancy of scripture as the root of all heresy. Rejecting inerrancy is something that I did because I recognized that the Bible kept providing me with evidence of its internal diversity and contradictions, and that in refusing to accept that evidence I was elevating my doctrine about the Bible above the Bible itself (which was allegedly supposed to be the... Read more
The big academic book about John the Baptist has been submitted to the publisher. It is presumably time to declare my sabbatical over, turn off the automated reply on my email, and consider myself back. How better to celebrate but with song? I’m teaching my course on the Bible and music this coming semester, and one of the things I’ve had as an assignment in the past is the creation of song lyrics. Most of the educators I know are... Read more
I am probably not the only person to watch Dreamin’ Wild who was in a band (actually, several) when they were younger, who wrote songs (I still do), who at one point considered pursuing music as a subject of study, taking the chance on a dream that had little chance of coming to fruition. As an avid music listener as well as amateur music-maker, I love that the internet has allowed me to discover music that I otherwise would not... Read more
I used to be much more fascinated by chiasms than I have been lately. What are chiasms, you ask? Instances in which, in the two-line units characteristic of poetry in Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Aramaic, two keywords or ideas switch places. A classic example from a saying of Jesus: The sabbath was made for people not people for the sabbath “Man” and “sabbath” swap places in the second line. If you draw lines between the matching keywords or... Read more
It is now official and so I am delighted to be able to announce that a proposal for a new SBL consultation focused on John the Baptist has been approved. Here is the information from the Society of Biblical Literature website: JOHN THE BAPTIST Chairs: James F. McGrath and Tony Burke Description: While there is always a steady trickle of interest in John the Baptist, recent publications in English, Spanish, and Italian suggest that there is a current surge not only in... Read more
I have been trying not to even think about what my next book might be after I wrap up the current project on John the Baptist. But as I’ve been moving towards completion of the current project, some of the points of intersection with other areas have grabbed my interest not just in relation to John the Baptist, but in their own right. One of those is the Synoptic Problem, i.e. the subject of how the Gospels of Mark, Matthew,... Read more
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