I am grateful that Neil Godfrey reminded me in a recent post of yet more parallels between mythicism and creationism. First, it seems that one can never successfully keep one’s denial of mainstream scholarship limited to one specific, narrow field. Knowledge is so intertwined that one cannot deny biological evolution without challenging our conclusions about geology, for example. And one cannot deny the existence of Jesus without also challenging (among other things) what we know about ancient Judaism and the variety of... Read more

There have been a lot of interesting posts related to topics like evolution and creationism in the past 24 hours, so I thought I should share some links. Steve Matheson continues blogging through Signature in the Cell. Steve Martin introduces a new guest post series on Evangelicals, Evolution and the Church. Undeception discusses evolution and evangel(ical)ism. Polycarp posted on Augustine on Genesis 1. Steve Wiggins posted on the experience of explaining the worldview of Genesis 1 to students. There have been several posts on... Read more

The Indianapolis Marion County Public Library purchased two items I recommended for acquisition, the Pimsleur Level III courses in Eastern Arabic and (modern) Hebrew. I was able to pick them up today. I’m eager to get back to working on them! At the Midwest SBL meeting, I only purchased one book: the revised Sokoloff Syriac Lexicon. It has not only been updated, but it no longer provides definitions and other information in Latin, but in English. It also includes a... Read more

GakuseiDon left a comment on an earlier post with a link to this fantastic, fascinating and apparently comprehensive list of the religious affiliations of superheroes. Plenty of fodder for discussion there! Read more

Jim West pointed out this video of a talk about Rudolf Bultmann and his theology by David Fergusson: Read more

I didn’t, but other bloggers did. Brian Tucker spent so much time blogging the conference that I never even saw him. Nijay Gupta and Peter Bekins have also blogged about the conference. Read more

Today in my class on the Bible, we started the subject of “the Prophets.” Although we had already covered the “former prophets” aka the Deuteronomistic History, this was our first direct look at the phenomenon of prophecy. Since the student who presented addressed the subject of “false prophets” I shared with the class the story in 1 Kings 22. For those who may not be familiar with it, the story features a prophet who predicts both that the king will... Read more

I received an e-mail about this event and thought I would share it for those in Indianapolis and its vicinity who may find it interesting. The information below is from the web site of IUPUI’s Center on Philanthropy. Zakat in America: The Evolving Role of Islamic Charity in Community Cohesion Dr. Ingrid Mattson 5:00 – 6:00pm Lecture 6:00 – 6:45pm Reception & book signing University Place Hotel & Conference Center (IUPUI Campus) 850 West Michigan Street Indianapolis, IN 46202 The... Read more

Those who have learned other languages know that one’s ability to understand what others have said or written often improves more quickly than one’s ability to find the right words and grammatical constructions to express one’s own thoughts. I thus think that the annual Eisenbraun’s contest to compose something in an ancient Near Eastern language appropriate for Valentine’s Day not only provides much-needed entertainment, but also challenges us to try our hand at not simply reading ancient texts but composing... Read more

Rob Bradshaw shared these videos of the late German New Testament scholar Martin Hengel, from a series called “The Christ Files.” I’m embedding the first – click through if you want more! Hengel is of course famous for his work on topics like Judaism and Hellenism, crucifixion, and Christology, and so I look forward to watching more of these clips in the near future. Read more