Good Advice for those who are ABD

Last updated on: October 7, 2014 at 11:45 pm By Miles Mullin

“It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take.” -Alanis Morissette, “Ironic,” Jagged Little Pill (1995). Anxious Bench blogmeister, Thomas Kidd recently posted a great piece on “How to Survive Graduate School.” He dealt with big picture items such as tailoring reading strategies, taking care of your health, and attending to your spiritual life. In consideration of his closing question related to “must-do practices for graduate students,” I present the top-four pieces of good advice I received around the time... Read more

Those Suspicious Medical Missionaries

Last updated on: October 6, 2014 at 5:06 pm By Thomas Kidd

“It’s great that these people are doing God’s work, but do they have to talk about Him so much?” So muses Brian Palmer at Slate about the work of medical missionaries like Dr. Kent Brantly, who contracted Ebola in Liberia. I’m almost embarrassed to write about this piece, because it is such an easy target. But the Brantly case has put new focus on the work of medical missionaries, who are generating surprisingly negative comments from certain observers. These critiques... Read more

Gods on Earth

Last updated on: September 26, 2014 at 7:38 am By Philip Jenkins

I posted recently on the Greek empires that arose in the centuries following Alexander the Great, like the Ptolemaic regime in Egypt, and the Syrian-based Seleucid Empire. Specifically, I suggested that these realms shaped the worlds of Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity. This was nowhere more true than in their ideologies of kingship and government. Both Jews and Christians reacted forcefully against the divine pretensions of those kings, and that reaction has left powerful traces in the Bible. When Alexander... Read more

Naming Palestine

Last updated on: September 26, 2014 at 7:39 am By Philip Jenkins

I post frequently on matters of Biblical history, and on occasion I naturally have to give a geographical location, to suggest for instance that a given king ruled over the territory. I use the term “Palestine,” and that requires a word of explanation – not, you understand, apology. In my usage, Palestine refers to the geographical area that is today covered by the state of Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the Gaza Strip. That is the area defined as Palestine... Read more

In Many Tongues

Last updated on: October 5, 2014 at 6:41 am By Philip Jenkins

Over the past year, I have been making heavy use of a magnificent scholarly resource called Outside the Bible, which presents new translations of apocryphal and non-canonical works related to the Hebrew Bible, with extensive commentaries. The full reference is Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel and Lawrence H. Schiffman, eds., Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2013). The whole collection is a massive three volume work, running to 3,200 pages (and it’s... Read more

Inventing Eden

Last updated on: October 1, 2014 at 11:53 pm By johnturner

Zachary Hutchins’s Inventing Eden is a remarkable book. As its subtitle explains, Hutchins examines “primitivism, millennialism, and the making of New England.” Many of us probably know that various colonial and early American boosters promoted the environs of the New World as paradisiacal, Edenic destinations in which beleaguered Europeans could quickly reap a bounty from rich new soil. Hutchins goes far beyond such commonplaces to examine how a “prevalent belief in Eden’s historicity and prophesied futurity led New England colonists... Read more

Advice for the Dismal Academic Job Market

Last updated on: September 25, 2014 at 2:30 pm By Thomas Kidd

Over at Slate, Rebecca Schuman imagines an awkward scenario from a family gathering, which includes a newly-minted Ph.D.: You’re just making polite conversation, so you ask him: “Want to come visit us next Christmas?” Why on earth did his sallow face just cloud over at your kind and generous offer? Because he has no idea where he’ll be living two Christmases from now—he just applied to 30 jobs in 30 far-flung towns, so from a logistical standpoint “next Christmas” might as well be Pluto. Such... Read more

From Oxford to Malibu

Last updated on: September 29, 2014 at 10:41 am By Thomas Albert Howard

Apologies in advance, for this is going to be a short post. I have been on the road quite a bit, most recently to the UK to give a talk on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of World War I. The particular topic of the conference was Theology, Culture, and World War I. Even more particularly, it had as its focus the acrimony that developed between German and British theologians at the outbreak of the war. I gave a... Read more

Peregrinus and Part-Time Christians

Last updated on: September 25, 2014 at 8:01 am By Philip Jenkins

Around the 160s, the Greek satirist Lucian posted on the life and times of one Peregrinus, whom he depicted as a rogue and confidence trickster of dubious sanity. It’s a rollicking story, but one with serious implications for reading and teaching Christian history. According to Lucian’s tendentious account, Peregrinus went through multiple incarnations: as a criminal on the run, as a Cynic philosopher, and for some years, as a Christian, who was supported by other Christians for his supposed faith... Read more