There’s an interesting video on the PBS web site about the Thomas Christians of South India and present-day projects to rediscover and preserve their manuscripts. Read more

I must admit I forgot that today was Pluralism Sunday until I read blogs after church. To my relief, my class today ended up speaking about precisely this topic. A thought that has come up in the series about “When Christians Disagree” time and again is that most of would agree that it is OK to agree to disagree about non-essentials. What we really disagree about is what those essentials are. And so, after asking about that and how we... Read more

Here’s my son (accompanied by me on short notice) performing F. J. Gossec’s Gavotte at a recital this afternoon: Read more

I didn’t know what else to call this post, since there was so much in the blogosphere over the past couple of days, and it seemed worth mentioning. This post includes the most recent biblioblog activity, as well as stuff on other topics that the Bible (and thus supplemental in that way) and non-academic posts of interest (and thus supplemental in another way). But let me begin by highlighting something that I had intended to include in the carnival, but... Read more

The answer to life, the universe and everything is, as is well known, 42. And so this Biblical Studies Carnival falls a little bit short. But if you listen to Ottorino Respighi’s The Festivals of Rome while exploring it, it will all seem just fine. Is it a carnival? A festival? A circus? You, the reader in the audience, will have to decide. Let the carnival begin…send in the clowns! What better way to begin a Biblical studies carnival than... Read more

I could be completely wrong – it is easy to be wrong about LOST, since we’re trying to put together a puzzle for which we do not have all the pieces. But I am starting to suspect that I am beginning to know what LOST is about. Not bad, after watching 100 episodes, eh? Imagine a family of time-travellers, one of whom inadvertently kills his parent before he was born, in an event that also causes his time-travelling grandparents to... Read more

Let me just start this post by saying SPOILER ALERT! I’ll be talking about the latest episode, and if you haven’t seen it, don’t read this until you have. I thought about calling this post “We’re All Special”, since it seems that Daniel Faraday has reached the conclusion that it is not only Desmond to whom “the rules do not apply”, but all of us can change our destinies. We are “the variables”. What remains to be seen is whether... Read more

The Biblical Studies Carnival #41 will be coming here soon. It isn’t too late to submit posts for inclusion. Just make sure they have at least some relation to the academic study of the Bible, or they’ll end up in the freak show at the tail end of the carnival… Many thanks to all those who have submitted posts so far! Read more

The title of this post combines two interests of mine: Biblical studies and bad puns. It is frequent, in discussions of the resurrection, for those who are persuaded that our beliefs on this topic ought to remain static to appeal to Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 15:17, which says that “if Christ was not raised, your faith is in vain”. What makes this interesting, and somewhat ironic, is that, for most contemporary Christians (N. T. Wright and a few of... Read more

Whoever clings to his or her faith shall lose it, and whoever lets go of his or her faith shall keep it. [A variation on Luke 17:33] Read more