As I’ve been reflecting on the far more explicit religious overtones in TRON than I recalled from watching the movie when I was younger, I’ve found one particular aspect of its implicit message intriguing. At one point, Tron says to Flynn that, if he is a user, then he must be in the computer world as part of some plan. Flynn’s response is that sometimes you just muddle through and take things as they come. Tron thought that is the... Read more

There is a discussion of Battlestar Galactica taking place at the United Nations right now (HT Galactica Sitrep). This may be an important factor in people continuing to take science fiction seriously even if the Sci-Fi Channel goes ahead with changing its name to something silly. Read more

I want to mention a very recent documentary, God and Gays, featuring gay Christians talking about the struggles they have faced as they have worked through their spiritual and sexual identities. While the segment on the Bible in the second half of the movie could have been better in some ways, the personal experiences shared more than make up for it. I recommend it for those interested in exploring this topic. Certainly no one should be talking about homosexuality as... Read more

Harrassowitz Verlag seems to be becoming the publisher of scholarly books on the Mandaeans in German. Their latest such volume takes its title from the Mandaean refrain “And Life Is Victorious!” and is a collection of studies on Mandaean and Samaritan subjects in memory of Rudolf Macuch. You can see the table of contents and a sample online, the latter being from the chapter written by Macuch’s daughter about her father. I’m looking forward to getting hold of a copy... Read more

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! For the occasion, Irenic Thoughts has pointed out that the text of Patrick’s Confession is available online. Indigenous Stranger has a version of St. Patrick’s Breastplate. 3 Quarks Daily points to a New York Times article that is relevant to some of us New Testament scholars, since it is (more or less) about why some of the best parables would also have been the hardest to remember. There’s a new book available for pre-order on Amazon:... Read more

I watched the movie TRON with my son tonight, not having seen it for many years. I was afraid he might find the graphics and special effects pretty lame, having grown up with movies that featured advanced CGI effects, but fortunately that wasn’t the case. It had dawned on me at some point in my adult years that the movie echoed a lot of religious themes, in particular with a person from the world of the creators becoming a program... Read more

Entertainment Weekly has an article on connections between LOST and Prince Caspian. Christianity Today has one about connections between LOST and Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It would be ironic if the character Charlotte S. Lewis has died just as we begin to discover the connections between LOST and the writings of the author C. S. Lewis. The EW article also notes that in the single-volume collection of the Narnia Chronicles, p.316 is the dedication page for Prince Caspian. And... Read more

A Romanian pastor, the late Rev. Mircu Cocar, apparently used to offer the following wise advice to his congregation: Read the Bible like you eat a fish. Take what’s good, and leave the bones on the plate. Read more

Today we began a new topic in my Sunday school class series “When Christians Disagree”: homosexuality. We’re beginning with those passages that have often been singled out as relevant to the issue, although in the present instance, I suggested that Genesis 19 might not be about homosexuality but rather about hospitality, rape, violence and a number of other issues. Also noted was Ezekiel 16, which condemns Sodom in particular for lack of concern for the poor. The question of what... Read more

The recent volume edited by Tom Thatcher, Jesus, the Voice, and the Text: Beyond The Oral and the Written Gospel (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008) provides both an appreciative and critical retrospective on the contribution of Werner Kelber to our understanding of orality and the Gospels, as well as explorations of methods and perspectives both old and new on this and related topics. The first three chapters focus specifically on the work of Werner Kelber and in particular his groundbreaking... Read more