Ancient Worlds in Digital Culture at #AARSBL16

Last updated on: November 13, 2016 at 5:20 pm By James F. McGrath

About a month ago, the blog Evangelical Textual Criticism drew attention to the first volume in a new series, Digital Biblical Studies. For those interested in the volume, which really is an incredibly fascinating survey of the Digital Humanities in relation to Biblical studies, there will be a panel discussion at SBL, in which I am one of the panelists: S19-314 Digital Humanities in Biblical, Early Jewish, and Christian Studies 11/19/2016 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM Room: Bowie A (2nd Level)... Read more

Blogging from a Phone

Last updated on: November 14, 2016 at 4:26 pm By James F. McGrath

It seems that one can increasingly do crucial tasks with smaller and smaller mobile devices. It used to be challenging to blog from an iPad. Now one can do so easily from one’s phone. This post is a test of that, as I try to decide what devices I need with me at the upcoming AAR/SBL annual meeting. There are still some tasks that are easier on larger devices, such as note taking. But which ones do you find simply... Read more

Romans 13

Last updated on: November 13, 2016 at 6:47 pm By James F. McGrath

Romans 13 has been getting a lot of mention lately. Romans 13:1 was the one biblical text that the Communist authorities in Romania consistently knew. “Submit to the authorities” – the Bible says so! We all know that the Bible can be used both to build and to bludgeon. The Bible itself contains multiple perspectives on authority. While there is a consistent rejection of violent uprising throughout the New Testament, the view of Roman authority in the Book of Revelation is very... Read more

RBL Review of The Birth of the Trinity

Last updated on: November 13, 2016 at 8:03 pm By James F. McGrath

My review of Matthew Bates’ book The Birth of the Trinity has appeared in RBL. You can find it on Academia.edu if you cannot access it on the RBL site. It is a vibrant time to be part of the discussion of Christology in early Christianity! Read more

A Life in Mandaean Studies

Last updated on: November 11, 2016 at 1:48 pm By James F. McGrath

The Ancient Jew Review has a feature on Jorunn Buckley, who is quite literally the only scholar whose primary area of focus throughout her career has been the Mandaeans. Others of us also work in that area, but as one among numerous others. For Buckley, other areas are the things she has dabbled and branched out into, while the Mandaeans have consistently been her primary focus. Her work has related to both the Mandaeans themselves as living people in our time,... Read more

How Mythicism Happens

Last updated on: November 11, 2016 at 1:48 pm By James F. McGrath

The quote comes from a blog post by Taylor M. Weaver, written as a reflection on the recent debate between Bart Ehrman and Robert Price. Click through to read the whole thing. On the one hand, I can’t agree that Taylor’s quote reflects all mythicists, since Robert Price is not “undereducated” – although as came up in the debate, he certainly doesn’t seem to have kept up with his field since he was a student, since his views on pre-Christian Gnosticism, which a century... Read more

Case Closed on the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife – but there’s more to be said at #aarsbl16

Last updated on: November 11, 2016 at 7:56 am By James F. McGrath

A fair amount of discussion has been taking place online about the authenticity of some new manuscripts that have come to light recently. These include one that has been dated to the 7th century BCE and which mentions Jerusalem, as well as a collection of new dead sea scrolls. And so it is time for me to revisit the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. I had proposed a paper for SBL 2016 and had it accepted, and both before I submitted the proposal, and... Read more

Why Hillary Clinton Lost

Last updated on: November 10, 2016 at 9:37 am By James F. McGrath

My friend Tony Paganelli wrote the following on Facebook, and I thought that it needs to be read widely, so with his permission, I am sharing it here. I think of myself as a student of politics, but I was very wrong about yesterday. I read all the data. I studied polls. But how were the polls so wrong? I wanted to know, so I spent some time poring over numbers today to figure out what I’d missed. Turns out... Read more

Which Sci-Fi Dystopia Are You Living In?

Last updated on: November 10, 2016 at 6:52 am By James F. McGrath

To help with processing the election results, we connected them to a discussion (in my class on religion and science fiction) of dystopias. First, I should probably highlight the fact that people around Indianapolis today were depressed and disheartened, with some even weeping. How can this be, you might ask, when Indiana voted for Trump and Pence? The urban centers are often very different from the rural surroundings. If you drive south from Indianapolis, you see Confederate flags flying from... Read more

The Election Wasn’t Rigged. Now What?

Last updated on: November 9, 2016 at 9:59 am By James F. McGrath

I had hoped to be writing a very different blog post this morning. But the election results are in, and Donald Trump has been elected the next president of the United States. The New York Times is still showing Hillary Clinton as having won the popular vote. And so discussions about reform of the electoral process needs to occur, as it has for a long time. But more importantly, Trump’s victory shows that the fears he played on, that the... Read more