This year’s theme for Blog Action Day (which is October 15th) is Water. Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo. Read more

Yesterday I learned that there is a free online video editing tool called JayCut. I have yet to try it, but colleagues of mine have tried it and found it useful. And since I know there are people reading this either who use video clips in the classroom, or who are just dying to make their own mash-ups for their blogs, I thought I’d pass on the information. If you try it out, do leave a comment and let me know... Read more

With the trial related to the James ossuary about to end, it seems we’re going to have a resumption of the lively debates about its authenticity. For those who may have forgotten about it, the ossuary has the inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” on its side, and the trial relates to whether Oded Golan (who brought the ossuary to light on the antiquities market), or perhaps someone else, forged the inscription, or whether it might in fact... Read more

HT to Bob Cargill for sharing this entertaining song by They Might Be Giants entitled “The Mesopotamians.” Click through and read the entertaining story of how he found out about it. http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/jAMRTGv82Zo?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0 (If you are more interested in science than ancient history, they also have a song about Paleontologists). Read more

In working on an article on an almost entirely unrelated subject, I happened across online versions of Shirley Case Jackson’s book The Historicity of Jesus. Since I had a request to revisit earlier arguments for mythicism, I thought it appropriate to share this older response to those arguments. And for what it’s worth, that request came from Quixie, whose own post “A case against mythicism (finally)” is also worth linking to. Read more

Three posts came up in my reader today on this theme, and I wanted to share them. All three are focused on combatting the anti-gay attitudes and rhetoric that are widespread among conservative Christians. Letters: Desperate to BelongGay Suicide and the Ethic of Love: A Progressive Christian Response “Ex-Gay” is Anti-Gay, Disguised as Compassion Read more

Mark Goodacre has responded to my post which was a response to his (on the orthodox redaction of the Gospel of Mark by Matthew). Doug Chaplin recommends both our posts, as well as others. Bob Cargill discusses using digital course material to make textbooks. As Jim West reminds us, it isn’t too soon to send submissions for this month’s Biblical Studies Carnival. Nick Norelli and I both had a new blog come to our attention today: Reviews of Biblical and Early Christian... Read more

Today in my class on Revelation, we were up to chapter 12, which features, on the one hand, some classic imagery depicting a battle between Michael and Satan and their angelic hosts, while on the other hand, it features a subversive reinterpretation of the way such battles are envisaged, since it describes the “counquerors” in Revelation 12:11 as follows: “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their... Read more

Mark Goodacre posted today on the “orthodox redaction of Mark.” While I certainly agree that we find later redactors transforming their sources to be more in line with their own convictions (whether about “orthodoxy” or other matters), I am not persuaded that the first example Mark offers represents such a case. Mark (Goodacre, not the other one) writes: Take, for example, the question of Jesus’ father. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus does not have a human father. He is “the craftsman, the son of Mary”... Read more