“Ideologue Ralph Nader’s bestseller Unsafe at Any Speed raised consciousness about the very real dangers of the automobile; ideologue Richard Dawkins’s bestseller The God Delusion raises our consciousness about the very real dangers of religious dogma. Religion, like the automobile, may lead to tens of thousands of pointless deaths every year. Religions, however, are even more valuable than the automobile to humanity. At the price of the “smog” of sometimes misleading superstition, religions keep the prosocial emotions in consciousness. Society... Read more

Tonight I finally got to see the movie Hancock. I wish I had been able to be among the earliest viewers of the movie, to be truly and completely caught off guard when Charlize Theron’s character reveals her power and throws Will Smith’s through the wall, together with the fridge. Even so, it was a great movie, with a lot going for it. The underlying premises are all intriguing – from the idea of a superhero who needs to improve... Read more

One of the surprises waiting for me when I got back from SBL was that the cover design for my forthcoming book The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Contexthad been finished. Here’s what it is going to look like: The fireworks on the cover are not, to my knowledge, intended to represent the “fireworks” that often fly when people discuss God in general or monotheism in particular. The cover is a bit surprising for a book... Read more

Most of the phishing attempts and scam e-mails I warn people about are not hard to spot as such. But here’s one that could just be mistaken for an authentic e-mail by someone who doesn’t look at it closely enough. The key for realizing this is an attempt to get your account info rather than a genuine e-mail from Capital One is that the web site it sends you to is not the Capital One site, but a site made... Read more

I’ve been unable to blog much while I was away at the Society of Biblical Literature conference in Boston. Now that I’m back, there’s a lot to catch up on… First, some did manage to blog from (and about) SBL. Chris Heard provides a day by day account of his experiences on Saturday, Sunday and Monday (For this, Jim West thanks heaven). Jim Getz also provides a day by day (0, 1, 2, 3, and 4). Eric Sowell has a... Read more

I have managed to get internet access here in Boston at the Society of Biblical Literature conference. I read my first paper yesterday, on Mark’s missing ending, and tomorrow I’ll read the second one on the Mandaeans. Tonight is the dinner for bibliobloggers, which Michael Holcomb has organized and which John Hobbins posted a reminder about. If you are a biblioblogger in Boston, I hope you can join us for dinner at Dillons! We’ll be meeting first at the convention... Read more

Tonight’s Live From Lincoln Center featured violinist Gil Shaham offering a wonderful performance of some of the better and less well known works by Pablo de Sarasate. Among them my favorite was his arrangement of music from Ambroise Thomas’ opera Mignon, known to all Suzuki violinists for the Gavotte, which is featured (in a much fancier and more impressive form) in Sarasate’s arrangement. At the end of the program, Shaham was surprised with the 2008 Avery Fisher Award, which I... Read more

I will be attending the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in Boston, beginning tomorrow, and whether I blog while there will depend on a number of technical issues beyond my control. Be that as it may, I look forward to interacting with a number of bloggers I “know” face to face for the first time. Read more

“In the Pauline letters much effort is taken to introduce Paul’s co-workers. The reason for this may be found in the fact that some of these were the messengers who not only had to deliver the letters but had to perform them, i.e. read them aloud, expanding on them where necessary. The performer had to embody the voice of the sender(s). If, therefore, “Paul” introduces a fellow-worker without stating the reason, we may assume that it has to do with... Read more

Ken Schenck tagged me with a meme that I’d been tagged with before, but I’ve decided to play along. I have to find p.123 in the nearest book, locate the 5th sentence, and then post the next 3 sentences after that. The nearest book is Bridget Gilfillan Upton, Hearing Mark’s Endings: Listening To Ancient Popular Texts Through Speech Act Theory (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006). Here are the relevant sentences: “With a flash of irony, Xenophon allows this prophecy to... Read more