It has been far too long since I’ve posted on the subject of intelligent design, but I was inspired by Eric Reitan’s recent post to comment on the arena into which ID seems to be turning its attention, namely the soul and mind-body dualism. The whole method of intelligent design seems to be reducible to a simple two-step procedure: 1) Find something science allegedly cannot explain in principle; 2) Appeal to ‘intelligent design’ as the one size fits all ‘explanation’... Read more

A very recent visitor was the 400,000th, according to StatCounter. Thanks for visiting! And thank you to the other 399,999 as well! Read more

As the start of a new semester draws near, professors will find this useful to brush up their language skills in undergradese… HT Euangelion Read more

Ben Byerly has posted a lengthy quote from my book The Only True God as well as a series of questions, comments, thoughts and reflections. This was sparked in turn by Michael Whitenton’s post on amateur vs. professional study of the Bible, in which he noted that I had written something in my book that was relevant to that discussion currently making its way around the biblioblogs. April DeConick has posted entry #23 in her “Creating Jesus” series, on “ensoulment... Read more

What are you doing reading this post?! The conversation is currently continuing over at Ecce Homo. Hurry, you don’t want to miss it! Read more

The Mandaeans’ calendar is fascinating for all sorts of reasons, but its relevance today is relatively simple. It is the Mandaean new year! Happy new year to all Mandaeans around the world! Read more

I just received an e-mail informing me about a new online service from NBC News, making its news archives available. The address is http://www.archives.nbclearn.com. It is a subscription service, but one that it may be worthwhile for educators to persuade their institutions to subscribe to if there are enough relevant archives. One can currently sign up for a 30-day free trial. I hope you find something useful! Read more

For those who may not have heard of it, I wanted to briefly mention Gallica, a site connected with the Bibliotheque nationale de France. It is a useful site for finding older academic books that have been made available online, on subjects such as the Mandaeans. Read more

I’ve always lived in a world where going to the moon was possible. I wonder if that more than anything else is responsible for various aspects of the generational differences in worldviews one finds in the world today, or whether such generational divides exist even when nothing quite so earth-shattering (er, I mean, sattelite-visiting) separates the generations. Irenic Thoughts, The Lead and Ruth Gledhill are among those who have told the story of a historic but previously unknown event that... Read more

Michael Whitenton has posted a review of my book The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context on his blog Ecce Homo. Since he has encouraged me to respond and turn his blog review into a bloggersation, I’ll add a few thoughts. First, let me say that I’m very grateful for the review, and pleased to learn that keeping the book succinct did not undermine its persuasive power. Next, I do want to try to offer some... Read more