Shai is using Google Earth to map the literature and artifacts of religious groups in Babylonia, including the Mandaeans. LacusCurtius and Livius have a blog post about Philemon and slavery in the Greco-Roman world. Andie Byrnes shares another review of Roger Bagnall’s Early Christian Books in Egypt. She also shares a link to an online Coptic library, Coptica. New Scientist points to a new program, “Software Muse,” developed by IBM that enables bloggers to solicit readers’ input about what they should blog... Read more

I’ll say more about the Goodwin ceremony on some other occasion. For now I just want to mention that at one point in the ceremony I had what may be the most nervewracking experience a professor can have. The university president…suddenly started quoting my blog, in detail, at length! I share this as a reminder of a danger that many bloggers are inclined to forget or overlook: people may actually read what you write! All kidding aside, the blog post he quoted was this... Read more

It is at the intersection of LOST and Indiana (not to mention national politics) and so I obviously had to share this cartoon by Gary Varvel from today’s Indianapolis Star: Read more

Phil Plait shared the new photo below of a galaxy most of us have seen before, but never looking quite like this. This photo of the Andromeda galaxy was taken by WISE, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. Read more

The next book from James D. G. Dunn, due out in a few months’ time, is Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?: The New Testament Evidence. I’m sure that many others who share my interest in monotheism and Christology will be eagerly looking forward to its release. I had a chance to read a draft quite some time ago, and chat with Jimmy about it, and so I can already recommend the volume and am eagerly looking forward to the... Read more

There is an article in The Bible and Interpretation about the “John, Jesus and History” project which has been running for several years at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings and has produced lots of interesting conference papers as well as two published volumes so far. Read more

The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus has this gem today: Read more

Since today is Ash Wednesday, I thought I’d provide a post with a couple of screencaps from recent episodes where ash has featured prominently. Feel free to talk about LOST, ash in the Bible, Ash from Pokemon, or anything else that seems relevant… Read more

If you’re not getting a sufficient dose of mythicism and the historical figure of Jesus here, the discussion has spread to the blog Unreasonable Faith. Do pay a visit and join in, if you’re so inclined! Read more

Is it just me, or was tonight’s episode quite possibly one of the best ever, or at least in a long time? We’ve begun to get answers, although as always not without more mysteries. Who was that boy running through the jungle? Who makes the rules? But what we were served up was a treat, and perhaps brings us to the heart of the series, and perhaps explains why we are watching two timelines unfold in parallel. In one, the... Read more