On a related note, the latest of the Doctor Who Media Club pieces at Religion Dispatches has appeared. This one is focused on the episode “Cold Blood” and includes contributions by Gabriel McKee and I. Read more

Unreasonable Faith has a post that offers (from the blog Irreducible Complexity) a hilarious summary of a very common sci-fi plot, and then relates it to a recent post over here. It brings religion and science fiction together, in a thought-provoking way. So click through and learn about the blurflurgh…before it flemmoxates! Read more

Duane Smith has shared fragments from a “Lexicon of Scholarly Usage” that he remembers encountering at some point. Some of these “definitions” are priceless. •“et al.” = “plus some people I’ve never heard of,” or, in some contexts, “my co-authors.”•“apud” = “I’m too lazy to fine the original so I’ll quote it from someone else.” •“passim” = “I have some vague memory of the author discussing this elsewhere in his or her book”•“As I have demonstrated elsewhere” = “Please read... Read more

I am really grateful to have received a gratis review copy of A Reader’s Hebrew and Greek Bible. This is an incredibly useful resource for those who want a printed Protestant Bible, including the Old and New Testaments, in the original languages and in a single volume. It was in fact produced simply by combining in a single leather-bound volume the two previously separately-published Reader’s Hebrew Bible and Reader’s Greek New Testament. Since Hebrew is read from right to left... Read more

There have been a lot of interesting posts on blogs today, but I want to highlight one of them in particular, given my ongoing interest in subjects like the historical Jesus, Christology and monotheism. Andrew Perriman has a post about whether Jesus claimed to be God. There’s a lot of food for thought and discussion, and so I thought I’d share it! Read more

I was pleased to find out a few moments ago that the archive of NT Wrong’s biblioblogging for 2008-2009 has been made available online once again. Take a look, reminisce, and remember the good old days… Read more

“Isn’t it odd? Christians created a theological scenario that placed the soul of every person at risk of eternal damnation. To counter that threat, we interpreted the life and death of Jesus in a particular way, then spent billions of dollars battling the threat we created. Wouldn’t it just be easier to stop perpetuating the scenario?     Perhaps the day might come when Christianity will reconsider its priorities, when preparing souls for an afterlife we have no proof exists fades... Read more

The movie Agora is worth seeing just for the beautiful recreation of ancient Alexandria alone. The sets are stunning. The story likewise is worth seeing, although not if one is going to make the mistake of thinking that there is historical evidence for all of its details. The movie is based on a real historical figure – Hypatia of Alexandria – and actual events surrounding her. But a lot of it is fictional, including the suggestion that Hypatia might have... Read more

Via Jim Getz and AWOL (The Ancient World Online) I learned today of the site Mnamon, which is dedicated to the study of ancient writing systems used in the Mediterranean world. It is mostly links to other sites, but having links to a variety of online resources (alphabets, language-learning materials, literature, fonts and so on) all gathered in one place is itself useful. As it describes itself in its sub-sub-title, it is “a critical guide to online resources,” and it... Read more

Responding to the mention of this program by several other bloggers, I tried Dropbox, and I have to say I am pleased with it. Up until now, my solution to working on documents on multiple computers was the thumb drive, and I expect that I will continue to use it. But it was very nice to have worked on a document at home last night, dragged it into the Dropbox folder on my home computer, and then come to the... Read more