Ben Myers made a widget for his blog. Must be contagious… Get the Exploring Our Matrix widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Read more

I watched the movie Atonement last night, and couldn’t help thinking about the New Testament authors. Did the Gospel authors seek to make “atonement” for their failures much as the author in the film did? Certainly this seems to be the case in the stories of Jesus’ burial, where his burial gets more and more honorable as one follows through the canonical Gospels. If there is something that puzzles me, it is why they felt the need to do that... Read more

[A review of books by Spong and Wright, originally posted on my old blog on June 4th, 2007] I deliberately chose to read the two books I am writing about in parallel, more-or-less simultaneously, so as to better be able to reflect on the similarities and contrasts between them. Both are written by authors who are bishops in the Anglican/Episcopal church. One is John Selby Spong’s A New Christianity for a New World, while the other is Tom Wright’s Simply... Read more

Starting with a quote on Maggi Dawn, I found myself tracking down the full source of the quote on another blog, Commonplaces. It is a letter attributed to Dorothy L. Sayers, which addresses itself to what “average people” think about, and think they know about, Christianity. No specific primary source is identified in any of the places I have seen it quoted. The content, nonetheless, is worth quoting as thought-provoking discussion fodder: The only letter I ever want to address... Read more

Review of Steve Moyise and Maarten J. J. Menken (editors), Deuteronomy in the New Testament: The New Testament and the Scriptures of Israel (Library of New Testament Studies, 358; New York: T & T Clark, 2007). Deuteronomy in the New Testament follows volumes in the same series on the Psalms and Isaiah in the New Testament, working down the list of the most frequently-cited books from the Jewish Scriptures/Old Testament. As Deuteronomy includes the Decalogue, references and allusions to which... Read more

I recently posted a link to a plagiarism tutorial to help students avoid getting expelled. I also have a page of my own creation with examples and explanations. It seems as though my students may not be the only ones who need such help. Ian at Further Thoughts has posted a round-up of the blogospheric activity relating to the use of an animation in the movie Expelled that seems to have been used without permission. It may be a copy... Read more

Chris Tilling, prompted by a comment I left on an earlier post, has tackled head-on the question of whether Jesus was wrong. This is relevant not least to the discussion of evolution among Christians, since if one is persuaded that Jesus didn’t think evolution happened, and equally persuaded that Jesus could not have been wrong about this, then there is not much left to be said! On what Bryant thought of evolution, and why, see Ken Schenck’s recent post on... Read more

One student made use of this Historical Jesus FAQ in an assignment. Another student has begun blogging the Gospel of John. This isn’t from a student, but may interest many of my students: IO9 has a piece on religion and science in science fiction. Read more

April DeConick has posted two items on her blog related to the only Gnostic group from the ancient world that has survived until our time. The first asks what can be done to help the Mandaeans, and offers some recommendations from Mr. Suhaib Nashi, the president of the Mandaean Associations Union. The second post draws attention to the recently-published human rights report about the plight of the Mandaeans, whose historic homeland is in Iraq and Iran. Read more

Here’s one from today’s blog entry at Beyond the Firmament that I really liked: For one to acknowledge “microevolution” — the observable fact that any species demonstrates subtle changes from one generation to the next — but not be willing to recognize the possibility of “macroevolution” — the idea that many of these small changes over eons of time can eventually result in a species no longer being classified with its distant ancestors — makes about as much sense as... Read more