As I was preparing the PowerPoint for my conference paper which I read yesterday, I looked for one that featured the famous quote from Yoda on the left. I didn’t expect to find it paired with a quote from Paul’s letter to the Romans. It was interesting to see these two sets of texts brought into conversation with one another, especially as I was finalizing my own thoughts on what Biblical scholars can learn from comparing the two. Presumably the same... Read more
This session focused on canon and fan fiction, making comparisons between science fiction and other genres on the one hand, and Biblical studies on the other. Frauke Uhlenbruch presided. My paper was up first, and it turned out there was no projector, and so my slides – which had no point to them other than to add an additional element of humor – didn't appear. I will blog about my own paper separately at some later point, and have already... Read more
I got to Atlanta last night. This morning I picked up my tote bag which included my name tag holder. Nearby, the book exhibit was soon to open, and so I saw and chatted briefly with several people I know who were waiting there. There is really impressive attendance at the first session I attended, part of the John, Jesus, and History program unit, which I used to be more involved with in the past than I have been lately.... Read more
The Bible’s edges blur into the world around it. There is no human encounter with a text that does not involve that person interpreting what they read, which in turn connects with their upbringing, their culture, their language, and many other aspects of the world around them. On the composition end, the Bible also blurs into the world around it. Its authors were part of a linguistic, cultural, historical, and religious context. Words in Jude, Acts, and other works are quotations from... Read more
At some point I’ll post a listener’s guide, if necessary, to the song “50 Ways to Forge a Gospel,” which I shared here recently, the YouTube video of which I’ve embedded above. It is full of references to specific forgeries, pseudepigraphies, novels, and other kinds of Jesus literature both ancient and modern, both canonical and extracanonical. Did you catch all the references? Did you get which books are being referred to? Share the ones you have successfully identified in the... Read more
Today I travel to the joint annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature. I will try to blog about the conference as it happens. My conference paper for this year’s SBL conference will be presented in a session of the Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship program unit on the theme Imaginal Worlds and Biblical Studies. It focuses on what we can learn by comparing the concept of “canon” as it functions in relation to the Bible... Read more
A fantastic point was made recently on the blog Atheist Revolution, defining freethought as above all else a rejection of tribalism. Here’s an excerpt from the post: I find that one of the most important implications of freethought is that it rejects the sort of tribalism that would lead one to accept some ideas and reject others on the basis of their source. Political ideologies might provide the most striking example of this. Someone who swallows the entire ideology of one political... Read more
This year’s session of the SBL Blogger and Online Publication program unit will be the last ever, and we will be going out with a bang. This final blogger session will feature a panel of well-known bloggers whose blogs – like their scholarly activity more generally – reflects and represents well the full range of kinds of blogging and scholarship that exist. The panelists are Bart Ehrman, Wil Gafney, and Lawrence Schiffman. Come hear them talk, then engage one another in conversation,... Read more
As the song lyrics indicate, it genuinely was at the 2015 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium that I got the idea for this song, and mentioned it to Bart Ehrman over a drink after his keynote address, which was the primary inspiration for the song, although the whole range of papers were in mind and there are nods to many of them. This is the kind of silliness I tend to engage in when I’ve just finished a project, and so... Read more
If someone moves from fundamentalist religion to fundamentalist atheism, or vice versa, they haven’t actually converted or deconverted. It is only when you move from fundamentalism to a more mature and balanced view that you’ve actually undergone a fundamental change. I wrote the above words when sharing Allan Bevere’s tips for diagnosing and curing unreformed fundamentalism on Facebook. That post of his sure has generated a lot of interesting reflection and discussion! Read more
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