I’m watching the vice presidential debate. While McCain’s running mate is coping better than I expected (although just as I tuned in, she was saying that she isn’t going to answer the question posed but focus on something else she thinks is more important), I still can’t distinguish her clearly in my mind from Tina Fey’s imitation of her on Saturday Night Live. Is there a move on the part of the Republican party to change the pronunciation of the... Read more

As I searched online for some resources on oral tradition and the New Testament, I came across a couple of things that seemed to be worth sharing. First, the site for a course on world religions called “The Sacred Journey” has several scholarly articles. Since most of the names were misspelled on that web page, I will reproduce them correctly here: Gregory, Andrew. On oral and written Gospel? Reflections on remembering JesusNiditch, Susan. Oral Tradition and Biblical ScholarshipKelber, Werner. Oral... Read more

Richard Carrier, the famous atheist who writes and speaks about historical matters related to early Christianity, has added my book The Burial of Jesus to his Amazon wish list. If any regular readers have always wanted to make his aquaintance, why not buy it for him and take the opportunity to introduce yourself? 🙂 On his blog he said that if he really loves it or really hates it, he might blog about it. Both reactions are within the realm... Read more

The Mandaean community in Australia has been particularly active both in creating a web presence for the Mandaeans and in publishing printed facsimiles of Mandaean texts. There will be a radio show about the Mandaeans in Australia this coming Sunday: ABC Radio National, Sunday October 5 at 7.10am (repeated on Wednesday October 8 at 7.05pm) or listen online. [For American readers, that is a different ABC…can you guess what the “A” stands for?] Once the podcast is available to listen/download,... Read more

This week’s episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles introduced some new and interesting twists, although perhaps this won’t be enough to improve its ratings. Potentially most interesting is the idea that some of the machines want peace. Is that who the mysterious shapeshifting robot from the future represents? Does “her daughter” know that her mother, Catherine Weaver, has been replaced by a machine? We also wonder why a shapeshifter would pretend to be a urinal – Isn’t that dangerous?!... Read more

I’m one of the participants in today’s “Mind Meld” on SF Signal. The topic for this one is the question “What’s Your Favorite Sub-Genre of Science Fiction and/or Fantasy?” Try guessing what I picked before heading over there… Read more

I must offer thanks to those who decided to pre-order The Only True God. I just looked and it was ranked as a bestseller, coming in at #53 on amazon.com in the category Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > History of Religion Of course, I initially suspected that perhaps there were only 53 books in this category, but not so! 🙂 Read more

We are part of something greater than ourselves, something that may well be infinite. It gave rise to us – “created” us, if you will, through the unfolding of various processes. We cannot see it from the outside, cannot know if referring to it as “it” fits less well than using a personal pronoun. Does this reality that transcends and incorporates persons such as ourselves likewise transcend terms such as personal and impersonal? We see in the wider universe what... Read more

You can pre-order The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context at a significant discount on amazon.com. I’m not sure what kind of offer University of Illinois Press has at SBL, but it is hard to beat 34% off the list price! Read more

Review of Jack Clayton Swearengen, Beyond Paradise: Technology and the Kingdom of God (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2007). Review published in Teaching Theology and Religion 11:4 (2008) p.236. Jack Clayton Swearengen’s book Beyond Paradise: Technology and the Kingdom of God is intended as a primer on the ethics of technology and engineering from a Christian perspective. Apart from its final chapters, which offer a naively simplistic presentation of “the biblical response” (p.271) to the book’s subject, this volume succeeds... Read more