I initially thought I would most likely explore the stories of these two women in separate chapters. But having looked at them closely, I don’t think it is just the author of the Gospel of Mark who forces them to be connected. Unless Mark, our earliest source, is completely off base, they are inherently related to one another. Mark, to be sure, uses his characteristic method of sandwiching one story between the beginning and end of another to prompt us... Read more
Another call for papers that I knew you’d agree is worth sharing. I’m unlikely to be able to make it, since it falls during our last week of classes at Butler. But we’ll see… An Astounding 90 Years of Analog Science Fiction and Fact: The Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium Date and Time: December 12, 2019, 9:00AM-6:00PM Location: New York City College of Technology, 285 Jay St., A105, Brooklyn, NY Almost 90 years ago, Analog Science Fiction and... Read more
I want to provide two lengthy excerpts from a much longer interview of Jeff Kripal from the AAR’s Reading Religion book review site. Here’s the first, on the scientific method: The success of science depends entirely on what it refuses to look at—the only reason science gets to explain everything is because it gets to say what everything is. If you or I want to put things on the table that science cannot study, those things are dismissed as not real... Read more
Another audiobook that I listened to a while back was Mike McHargue’s Finding God in the Waves. It’s another one that I highly recommend. In it he talks about “transcendence withdrawal,” how church health is undermined by hidden doubt and the wearing of masks, the fact that deconstruction of faith is not purely rational, and that “the need for certainty is an addiction we can kick,” while offering a vision of how to be spiritual and rational at the same time,... Read more
This call for papers came to my attention and I thought it would be worth sharing here: J.R.R. Tolkien and the Works of Joss Whedon Special Issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/ Co-edited by Janet Brennan Croft and Kristine Larsen [email protected]; [email protected] Connections between any of the works of both creative geniuses are fair game for this interdisciplinary volume. Some possible topics include: world-building, horror and the monstrous, critiques of heroism, women’s roles, Buffy-speak and elf-speak, and villainous motivations. Please submit a... Read more
Wayne Coppins shared this announcement. He writes: The newly founded international open access journal “Journal of Ethics in Antiquity and Christianity (JEAC)” (available at www.jeac.de) provides a platform for specialized research in ancient ethics with a particular focus on its impact and interdependence with the development of Christian ethics. It attempts to establish a dialogue between biblical, classical, Judaistic and patristic research on the one hand, and philosophical and theological approaches on the other. Thus, the journal opens up opportunities for... Read more
It so happened that I was sitting in a room in the Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville when I read the article in the Atlantic about the decline in usage of books in Yale Univerity’s libraries. I had reason to be in Nashville anyway, and thought I should spend the day at Vanderbilt University’s library. I had no idea when I booked my fantastically affordable room on the amazingly beautiful campus of Scarritt-Bennett that I was staying at a location that... Read more
I’ve shared tech tutorials in the past when I’ve found a solution to a problem that no one else seems to solve online. I’ve happened across another one as I was in the process of upgrading my computer. I got a new motherboard and hard drives but kept the case, and discovered that the pins that should have connected the motherboard to the case were set up in a manner that was incompatible. But I didn’t need to buy a... Read more
A key question I have to wrestle with in relation to this story is whether I am dealing with one incident or two, and how that impacts things. Both the following possibilities seem plausible to me. One is that a woman wept upon and wiped Jesus’ feet, while another poured perfume on his head, and there was cross-contamination between the two stories. The other is that Luke took a story and reworked it for his own purposes. There are of... Read more
The movie Skin which will be released this week is really powerful – painful to watch in many ways, especially knowing that it reflected real experiences, and because  it really does try not to hold anything back in exposing viewers to the seediest aspects of this racist subculture. I was very happy to have the chance to view the movie in advance of its upcoming theatrical release (in theaters and on demand July 26), and then to talk to director Guy Nattiv about it. The movie... Read more
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