I just finished watching Bill Maher’s Religulous. Some of it is genuinely skeptical in a good sense, and a lot of it is funny, often in a helpful way. The best conversation partners he had were those who were not dedicated to taking themselves and their beliefs so seriously as to attempt to shield them from criticism or humor. And even some of those he spoke to that did not embrace a questioning attitude nevertheless made a good impression on... Read more

“The SBL Annual Meeting is truly the “San Diego Comic-Con” of the world of Biblical Scholarship.” — Mark Goodacre, “SBL Annual Meeting 2009 talk“ Read more

A copy of Georg Graf’s Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur arrived via inter-library loan in the past couple of days. Today I had my first chance to dive in and do more than just take a passing glance. For those who may be unfamiliar with it, it is a 5-volume bibliographical work that surveys Christian literature in Arabic from antiquity until modern times. I have long wanted to have the time (not to mention the necessary linguistic proficiencies) to read... Read more

I finally watched Donnie Darko (yes, for the first time) last night. It was mainly because Chris Heard had suggested the label for me. So please use the comments section on this post to discuss all things Darko – and the philosophy of time travel – if you feel strongly about these subjects. Elsewhere around the blogosphere: The Biblioblog Top 50 pointed out a new blog (don’t worry that you can’t pronounce the title) on the Secret Gospel of Mark,... Read more

Is The Only True God “Copernicum”? Pay a visit to The Church of Jesus Christ and let me know what you think. I’d much rather my book be “Copernican”, personally, but for most authors that’s too much to hope for. But I’m willing to settle for “weighty”, which Element 112 certainly is. I suspect it is also ephemeral, and that too comes with the territory of publishing! 🙂 Elsewhere in the blogosphere, John Hobbins picked up on my mention of... Read more

I will be reading a paper at SBL – and it will be heard by others, I hope. The paper will be about precisely that experience, in a sense – the fact that texts, including texts that contain intertextual echoes about other texts, as well as their prior contact (if any) with the echoed texts themselves, were heard rather than read by most of those who experienced them. I originally left open the precise texts to use as examples to... Read more

I recently watched the movie Knowing, and as someone who combines the roles of New Testament scholar and science fiction fan, it was perhaps inevitable that I’d blog about it. I will be talking about details right up until the movie’s ending, and there is a sense in which the most enjoyable thing about Knowing is not knowing, and so I’m issuing an extra special SPOILER ALERT and asking those who have not watched the movie and intend to watch... Read more

Over at Ecce Homo someone asked about the difference between Hurtado and McGrath on Jewish monotheism and early Christology. As I said over there, I’m much more interested in hearing how others perceive the difference than attempting to provide my own answer (which I do, to some extent, in my book). Those who’ve read my book and Hurtado’s many volumes on the subject, please do chime in, whether over at Ecce Homo, here, or both, and share how you perceive... Read more

I was under the impression that the next Biblical Studies Carnival was to be hosted by Jim West on his blog. But as I tried to search the internet for his blog or information about the carnival, I found instead some unexpected results. I’ve decided to post some screenshots so that you can see for yourselves… But perhaps most striking was that Google not only suggested “total depravity” as an alternative to “Jim West’s biblioblog”, but directed me to a... Read more

Any attempt to speculate about what will happen on LOST always involves a serious likelihood of being wrong. But I think that the conclusion of the last season involved the creation of a temporal paradox that this season will focus on undoing. As Jack Shepherd set about trying to put Daniel Faraday’s plan into effect, he failed to consider the difference between himself enacting the plan and Daniel enacting the plan. By playing a decisive role in detonating the bomb,... Read more