This video combines too much that is interesting into a single video for me to have any chance at successfully summarizing it. So I’ll just share it and see what you think. Be warned that there’s a little bit of swearing, but that’s a small price to pay to see a famous but unfortunately nowadays all too little known bit of history brought to people’s attention. Read more

Matthew Paul Turner shared this video from Oral Roberts’ gay grandson, telling not only his own story but a longer tale of family tragedy, writing a letter to his gay uncle who committed suicide. Yet it somehow manages to end with the message “it gets better.” Also to be mentioned is the story of Jim Swilley, the megachurch pastor who felt he needed to come out of the closet in response to the recent instances of bullying and suicide. Read more

Deane Galbraith will be hosting the November 2010 Biblical Studies Carnival at Religion Bulletin. No need to wait until the end of the month to submit your posts (although presumably you do still have to wait until after you’ve written them…) Read more

There’s a mention of a new book on the blog What’s New in Papyrology: Multitextuality in the Homeric Iliad: The Witness of Ptolemaic Papyri by Graeme D. Bird. The book’s focus relates to a topic that interests me and many other New Testament scholars and students, namely what it means to take seriously the oral composition and oral context of many of the texts we study. In this case, Bird connects diversity in manuscripts of the Illiad with the question of whether there was “no... Read more

The third installment in the series “Blogging the Soulfisher” has been posted on the Mandaean Book of John translation project blog. Read more

Tommy Wasserman points out that the Call for Paper for the 2011 Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting is open online on the SBL web site. Read more

Jeremy has posted the Top 50 list for the month of October. I came in at #3. Thank you to everyone who reads this blog! Read more

ProfHacker shares the latest Teaching Carnival (4.3), which includes an array of links related to pedagogy and technology. There’s a new blog dedicated to the use of technology to bridge global divides in education, New Testament Scholarship Worldwide (HT Tom Verenna). It features a number of familiar and famous names from the realm of New Testament scholarship. Also of interest, Inside Higher Ed has a piece on how a professor and students in Minnesota returned the favor to a preacher... Read more

The late Ken Pulliam appears to have written some blog posts in advance and scheduled them to appear, and so those who read his blog have the eerie experience of reading new posts from a blogger who is no longer with us. His latest asks “Did Adam and Eve have free will?” It mentions a post still to come, and so we will probably be treated to an ongoing series. Unfortunately the first comment is from Rhology, known to most... Read more

In addition to being Halloween, today is Reformation Sunday, and so this is perhaps the one day of the year when I have an excuse to share some Reformation music. Not music from the Reformation, but something both dated and up-to-date. The story of the Reformation explored through the genre of progressive rock. To fans of progressive rock, the name Neal Morse is probably familiar. He was the frontman and a founding member of Spock’s Beard. Lately he has been... Read more