First, in case you missed it, take a look at the wonderful Twitter thread by Carmen Joy Imes on the story of Bathsheba in the Bible and why it is not only appropriate but important to treat what David did as rape rather than adultery: I thought it was just my incredibly niche timeline of Southern Baptists thrown together with Anglicans … but apparently not. David and Bathsheba are trending. A few points that I’m not hearing clearly enough: a... Read more
Everything Everywhere All At Once is a very strange movie. It has a sheer silliness about it, so much so that there were moments when I wasn’t sure I liked it. Yet there was a sense of something profound beneath the surface, much as is also true of The Good Place. So I kept watching and am glad I did. The end of the movie is surprisingly moving, and the message of the film is truly profound and challenging. For parents it... Read more
I shared photos on Facebook during my brief visit to Tiberias on the shore of Lake Kinneret or Lake Tiberias (named by the Gospel of Mark the “Sea of Galilee” and now more commonly known by that name). When I did so I wrote that Herod Antipas built cities, buildings, monuments of various sorts. John the Baptist built a ritual with water. Today the ruins of Herod’s capital in Tiberias don’t have much left of them and no one goes... Read more
Reinhardt Pummer’s book The Samaritans: A Profile offers an extremely helpful overview of the history literature and archaeology of the Samaritans including some of scholars’ most significant debates and discussions about where they came from who they are and how we answer those questions. While most academics who study ancient Judaism and/or early Christianity will know a little about the Samaritans, few of us know as much as we ought to. Among the important topics that Pummer covers is how... Read more
As I prepared for my recent trip to the Holy Land focused on John the Baptist, there were moments when I wondered whether it would accomplish what I hoped for. Would standing in the same places that John, his followers, and his critics stood lead to any new insights or raise new questions? The answer came as I made a quick visit to Joppa (Yafo), the ancient port city on the Mediterranean, since it is so close to Tel Aviv’s... Read more
For anyone interested in getting a glimpse of some of the exciting insights and groundbreaking new perspectives I’ve already come up with in the early stages of my research project focused on John the Baptist, I’m the keynote speaker at the Apostolic Johannite Church Conclave this weekend. My talk is titled “John the Baptist and the Mandaeans” and presents for a general audience some of what I consider the most interesting discoveries I’ve made thus far. Some are things implicit... Read more
I have been watching Babylon 5 and wanted to share this wonderful segment in episode 14 of the 5th and final season in which G’Kar, a member of the Narn species who wrote a book that people have come to regard as holy, is asked “What is truth? And what is God?” Here is his answer: If I take a lamp and shine it toward the wall a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for... Read more
There is a new book out by my Butler University colleague Tom Paradis: A Place Called District 12: Appalachian Geography and Music in The Hunger Games. Tom kindly agreed to do a blog interview and I was amazed by the time and effort he put into offering such detailed answers to my questions… Hi Tom. First, congratulations on your new book on a topic that I’ve been eager to talk with you about. The Hunger Games novels and movies offer... Read more
It was incredibly disconcerting to have the experience of finishing listening to the audiobook of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future and then hear the news of an extreme heatwave in India. A heatwave in India, albeit one set a few years from now and with a much larger number of deaths than we have had this summer at least thus far, is how the novel begins. I won’t give away spoilers (mentioning how the book begins doesn’t... Read more
Nicely converging with the announcement that there will be another season of Black Mirror, a book that I contributed to has been released: Theology and Black Mirror. I and several other contributors recorded an episode of the Two Cities podcast in which we talk about the book and the show more generally. Here is the information about the episode: NEW EPISODE of The Two Cities podcast! We’re once more talking about the new book, Theology and Black Mirror (published by Lexington... Read more
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