Tonight I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a concert by the Carmel Symphony Orchestra. I didn’t realize I would know several people in it, including my son’s current violin teacher and the teacher of his first teacher. I only found out about the concert yesterday, and quickly made plans to attend. The main reason was because the program included the Concerto for Horn and Orchestra by John Williams. I love Williams’ music – and not only his film scores.... Read more

“The irony should not escape us. Many conservative Christians oppose biological evolution while implicitly and unconsciously promoting a form of social Darwinism” (Roger E. Olson, How to Be Evangelical without Being Conservative (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008) p.137). “Luther is a hero to most conservative evangelical theologians. But the ironic tragedy is that too often they now fill the role of those inquisitors who demanded that Luther recant his newly discovered truths…But how can the church be reformed and always reforming... Read more

The following video from the American News Project highlights the religious beliefs typical of the Assemblies of God tradition with which Sarah Palin is connected, and the need for voters to ask her about beliefs which have political ramifications. Many were, I am sure, pleased to learn that her understanding is not that it is her responsibility to impose her moral views on others. But the question of whether she looks forward to an imminent apocalypse cannot but be relevant... Read more

Apparently I have been granted the sublime honor of being considered an associate member of the “Guild of Biblical Minimalists“. New Testament scholars cannot be full members, since we have too much useful historical material in the texts we study for it to be possible for us to attain to full-blown minimalism in our field. The number of posts so far is (perhaps appropriately) minimal, but I look forward to seeing what they do with this site. The potential for... Read more

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