An article in today’s New York Times highlighted a site called Wolfgang’s Vault. I had never heard of it before, but after a brief visit, I had to blog about it. It is essentially an archive of live performances by famous musicians and bands, which you can listen to online for free. Among them, I’m pleased to say, are a bunch of concerts by Genesis. I’m listening to a concert from 1981 at the moment. http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com/common/swf/wgv_st_player.swf Read more

Do readers of this blog have any thoughts on what commentary on the Gospel of John works best as a textbook for an undergraduate course on that Gospel ? The context is a university that does not have a religious affiliation, although many students obviously do. I’m tempted to just tell them to pick a commentary from a list – one that would probably include authors such as Kysar, Lindars, Brown, Talbert, Witherington, Keener, Neyrey. It just seems difficult to... Read more

There seems to be a theme in several recent posts around the blogosphere: who knew what, and when did they know it? I’m currently having an interesting discussion on the LXX Studies blog about creation out of nothing. Internet Monk asks what Jesus knew (including whether he could pass a test without studying). Undeception has a post about inerrancy. And Awilum shares what Amos knew about Manhattan. And James Tabor has a piece in The Bible and Interpretation about Mark... Read more

A friend of mine shared with me a video of Tim Minchin. I’d never heard of him before. It is essentially skepticism in humorous song, with an offer that is not quite the Randi Challenge Prize thrown in at the end, but is more entertaining. Since I know my blog readership includes Australian skeptics, I am confident at least some one of you will enjoy this. Read more

Mark Goodacre pointed out that this full-length lecture by John P. Meier on the historical Jesus – entitled “Jesus the Jew – But What Kind of Jew?” – is available on YouTube. Also in the audio/visual blogosphere, Kevin Scull pointed out a lecture by Bruce Winter available online, on the Baylor University (Truett Seminary) web site, which also has talks and sermons by other interesting speakers: Jürgen Moltmann, John Polkinghorne, Loveday Alexander, Dale Allison, Charles Talbert, and many others. In... Read more

It sounds like it has something to do with religion and sci-fi, but it doesn’t. Today the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog highlighted the indeed very useful Virtual Manuscript Room of the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, Germany. In the process they referred to documents that are being brought from the vault, scanned and made available as “X-Files.” Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I clicked the link and found no evidence that the cigarette-smoking man had been... Read more

I have a slight backlog of books to review, but I’m catching up. I finished reading John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One some time ago, but having decided to blog about each chapter, it will take some time to finish. I’ve been reading Martin Zemmit’s `Enbe men Karmo Suryoyo (Bunches of Grapes from the Syriac Vineyard) – A Syriac Chrestomathy, which Gorgias Press kindly sent me a copy of. It provides a nice, well-rounded reader in Syriac that... Read more

Not long ago I posted on the inclusion of a variation on the Schroedinger’s cat thought experiment in the last episode of Flash Forward, and some of the problems with the way they explained it. My good friend Bob Patterson responded to the show’s lack of scientific rigor by undertaking his own experiment on Schroedinger’s sardine. You can read about it on his blog. Do go take a look. It even includes a video of the experiment as it unfolded!... Read more

On the whole I’ve found the textbook I’ve been using for my class on the Bible this semester, Stephen Harris’ Exploring the Bible, to provide helpful information and just about the right amount of it. But the last chapter we read, on the world in which Christianity emerged, had some at one annoying facet. In a way that I associate with an earlier generation of scholars, Harris lists parallels between Jesus and Dionysus. To be fair, he also emphasizes that... Read more

I think this is one of the best cartoons on so-called Biblical literalism I have ever seen (HT Experimental Theology). You may need to click through to get the full-sized version. Read more