Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams have accomplished something important, and indeed rather remarkable, in their book The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos (New York: Riverhead/Penguin, 2006). They seek to offer nothing less than the route to a mythology for our age, one that embraces all of our best scientific knowledge, without understanding it to imply the insignificance of human beings, all the while recognizing that the myths that always... Read more

Today I started reading Bridget Gilfillan Upton’s book Hearing Mark’s Endings (Leiden: Brill, 2006). It connects up both with my interest in the end of Mark and in oral tradition. At one point she writes the following about the author of the Gospel of Mark: “That the evangelist could read and writer Greek suggests that he had received at least a primary education, and therefore must have come from a background which offered him a certain level of privilege” (p.10).... Read more

I’m grateful to David Ker for giving an extreme makeover to my book cover over at Lingamish… Anyone who doesn’t like the one I came up with is invited to print David’s and paste it on. I won’t be offended, honest! Read more

I’ve posted a larger image of the book’s cover over on The Burial of Jesus blog. I’m posting it here as well. I’ve hopefully gained a new respect for the difficult work cover designers do, if nothing else, through the process of making my own covers! If there is a next time that I publish a book through a similar process, I plan to get feedback on a range of possible designs before proceeding. In this case, however, this is... Read more

I’ve highlighted the wonderful resource that is http://www.archive.org/ before on this blog. But today I took a look to see what was there related not to my scholarly research interests, but to the music I love. I found a book about one of my favorite composers, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, as well as the score for one of his operas, Die Tote Stadt. Books written by Arnold Bax as well as the sheet music for his Second Sonata. Scores to works... Read more

In preparation for the release of my forthcoming books, I’ve set up an Amazon Connect Profile for myself. In addition to syndicating my blog’s RSS feed and highlighting books I’ve written, it also collects in one place reviews I’ve written. Particularly striking was seeing whether or not readers found my combined review of books Francisco Ayala and Michael Behe helpful. Readers of Ayala liked my review; readers of Behe did not. No real surprise there… Read more

Outside the Box has a post on the problem of death, disease, starvation, animals eating one another, and other such facets of the natural world that drive evolution. Can such a process be viewed as the work of a benevolent God? Here’s what I wrote in response to his post (I also left it as a comment on that blog): It is not simply evolution that poses this problem. The fact that countless organisms starved to death, were eaten by... Read more

Here’s a link to another flyer for The Burial of Jesus, highlighting some of what I think are the more interesting topics discussed and conclusions drawn in the book. I wasn’t sure if it sounded too “sensationalistic” for this flyer to be useful in promoting the book to academic libraries. I also learned that there are hundreds of people who hate the Papyrus font. They even have a Facebook group. Do many people reading this blog feel the same way?... Read more

My book The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith is close to being finalized, and hopefully will be available within a few weeks from BookSurge. Today I made a first attempt at making a flyer for use when promoting the book. I’d welcome feedback and suggestions about ways to improve it. You can download it from this link. I was glad to see that British television seems to be doing its part to keep interest in the subject alive until... Read more

Some fans of The 4400, like fans more generally, would have liked the show to go on forever, eventually dying a languishing and humiliating death as it runs out of steam. I just watched the end of season 4, the final season of The 4400, and I think it was a satisfying, appropriately dignified way for the show to end. In one sense, I prefer this end in its prime to its becoming a soap opera, or going on the... Read more