Christian Fundamentalists tell everyone that they ought to accept the truthfulness of the Bible. It is painfully ironic, therefore, that the character of fundamentalism has the effect of powerfully undermining the confidence of those who investigate or think seriously about its historicity. Think about it. Someone like N. T. Wright can come along and make the argument for why we ought to leave room in our approach to history for the possibility that the disciples really experienced encounters with the... Read more

With a title like that, I suppose anyone trying to avoid spoilers about tonight’s episode will have already averted their eyes. But as LOST gets more interesting in all sorts of science fictiony ways, I imagine those who are disliking the disclosure of the series’ true genre are getting more and more annoyed. But let’s be honest. Unless you couldn’t care less about the mysteries raised from the very first season, there had to be a sci-fi component. Hatches and... Read more

Here’s my son reciting Roald Dahl’s hilarious poem “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf” (from his Revolting Rhymes): Read more

A student drew my attention to an interesting LOST meta-theory, in other words, an attempt to find a unifying thread that relates the physics and the mythology of LOST in an overarching explanatory framework. This one focuses on mirror matter. Fans of the show, those fascinated by physics, and people with too much time on their hands will definitely want to take a look. Read more

Blogging is a great place to think out loud and present things in ways and with illustrations that one might not consider appropriate in a scholarly paper. As it happens, I’m getting ready to read a paper about oral tradition and the Synoptic Gospels at the Midwest Society of Biblical Literature Conference. I’m also reading Jesus, The Voice and the Text and will be blogging about it more systematically in the near future. One striking notion that has come into... Read more

A review of my book The Burial of Jesus has been posted at The Clever Badger blog. Do take a look! Read more

I had someone leave a comment on the last post that had nothing whatsoever to do with it. It was a long evangelistic appeal, in essence, that used Pascal’s wager (without giving credit and probably without knowing who Pascal was) and a lot of end-times pseudo-Biblical nonsense. As a rule I do not delete comments unless they are advertising spam, but this one seemed to have the potential to ruin a post where friends and family might leave comments encouraging... Read more

My son and I performed Ottorino Respighi’s Berceuse (No.1 from his Six Pieces for Violin and Piano). He played the violin, and I accompanied him on the piano. This has long been one of my favorite pieces of music for violin and piano. I hope you enjoy the video! Read more

If you haven’t seen it already, Gabriel McKee has written a review, entitled “Wrong on Religion; Wrong on Science Fiction”, for Internet Review of Science Fiction. It is a review of a book by James Herrick that I’ve also reviewed (my review gets mentioned in McKee’s). Read more

Thanks to April DeConick for drawing attention to a news piece on WFCR about the situation of the Mandaeans both in Iraq and in the United States. You can listen to the whole thing there. Read more