Just a couple of more spam hoaxes to share, in the hope that I may spare some gullible little old lady some grief as a result of falling for one of these attempts to get sensitive personal information from people. Personally, anyone who believes that a message from a legitimate institution, whether of government or of finance, would be entitled (in all capital letters) “KINDLY GET BACK WITH THE BANK IMMEDIATELY!!!!”, needs to learn their lesson the hard way. So... Read more

It was only a few days before the most recent episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles that I managed to watch the two-part two-hour premiere. So far, I like the show, which has the eerie menacing sliding sound from the movies when a terminator is around, as well as some philosophical reflections on the part of the main character – who is, interestingly enough, Sarah Connor rather than her son. It is essentially a story focused on Mary rather... Read more

I am once again teaching two very different groups of students. The class is the same: RL 202 The Bible. One is from 10-10:50am and one is from11-11:50am. Both are in the same room, and have the same syllabus. The biggest difference between them? The worldview that the majority in each group seems to share. The reading for today’s class was the first three chapters of Marcus Borg’s Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously... Read more

As the jet lag wears off, I will hopefully also soon find myself able to actually write about my trip too… Read more

“Fence-sitting is a precarious business; done for too long, it can lead to an injury in some vital part” (Roland Boer, Rescuing the Bible (Malden: Blackwell, 2007) p.79). Read more

“I have sometimes asked myself how a gynecologist could manage to have sexual intercourse; by the same token, one could ask how a New Testament scholar could be a Christian” (Peter L. Berger, Questions of Faith (Blackwell, 2004) p.54). Read more

One of the books I took along to read on my recent trip to India was Peter Berger’s recent Questions of Faith: A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity (Blackwell, 2004). I had high hopes, since I’ve found Berger’s writings beneficial and insightful in the past, and made use of his work with Thomas Luckmann on the sociology of knowledge in my doctoral work on the Gospel of John. Alas, the book is a disappointment. It was not simply a result of... Read more

What Would Jane Austen Do? This may seem like an odd title for my first post after returning from India. But it is closely connected to my trip, and more specifically to the way a movie such as The Jane Austen Book Club can seem more appealing and interesting on a 16-hour flight than it might otherwise. At one point in the movie, a character (who earlier had more of an academic approach to literary criticism) finds herself asking “What... Read more

Hi everyone! I got back from my trip to India yesterday. Normal blogging (meaning blogging and usual, and not that I will be making changes to my ‘usual abnormality’) will resume soon! Read more

I didn’t want to promise I would manage to post anything while away, which is why I was so vague about my hiatus/infrequent blogging during this time. I am currently in India, and tried once to post while in Delhi, but encountered an error and lost the half a post I had written, and so this is the second chance I’ve had to post something, and hopefully this time it will work (if you are reading this, then it did!).... Read more