Until today, I had been very impressed with the breadth of Fuller Seminary. They have long managed to maintain a reputation for being Evangelical and yet seriously scholarly, in a way that meant allowing room for a genuine diversity of voices and the kind of creative exploration that is essential to genuine scholarship. I was particularly impressed by the presence of Daniel Kirk on the faculty, as I knew Daniel to be a person of serious faith who was not afraid... Read more
A couple of years ago, Fred Clark posted about the way playing Bible clobber verses resembles a card game. His point reminded me of the famous scene towards the end of the movie WarGames. And so I wrote, in a post entitled “How To Win At Bible”: The only winning move in the clobber verse Bible game is not to play. For even to play the game concedes the rules for Bible reading to be what fundamentalists claim it is: a distortion which... Read more
If those who are against same-sex marriages want to use the Bible to argue against such marriages, they will need to explain why they are taking only part of the biblical definition of marriage. And if they want to complain about the redefinition of marriage, they should focus on the redefinition that made marriage a temporary commitment. After all, opposite-sex divorces are much more common than same-sex marriages will ever be. This quote from Kevin A. Wilson was part of... Read more
This call for papers came to my attention via the Hugoye list. It is connected with the interesting project titled “Novel Saints. Ancient novelistic heroism in the hagiography of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.” Call for Papers Holy Hero(in)es. Literary Constructions of Heroism in Late Antique and Early Medieval Hagiography International conference at Ghent University (Belgium), Thursday 18th to Saturday 20th February 2016 The ERC research group Novel Saints (Ghent University) builds on and contributes to a recent... Read more
Fred Clark shared this helpful map, showing all the states where the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision poses no threat to traditional heterosexual marriages. Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee has released this campaign image: If it doesn’t disturb you, it should. Because on the one hand, what it says is quite obvious. Did anyone not know that “the Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being”? Did anyone suggest that it was? So, on the other hand, what Huckabee is indicating is that he... Read more
Another great cartoon from Spike Davis. I wonder how many more things that Jesus never said, but some people think he did, you can list. And I wonder whether imagining Jesus saying he wished he’d come up with a particular phrase is a helpful reminder that he was a human being – a gifted teller of stories, and a charismatic leader with a powerful moral vision, to be sure, but not less human because of that. Read more
And here is a third trailer for the trip I am planning to lead to Israel and the West Bank in the summer of 2016. I made a point of including some footage from the Dead Sea and the Judaean desert which didn’t get included in the other two trailers. Read more
The news has just broken that the Supreme Court of the United States has issued its decision in a case that came before it regarding marriage between two people of the same gender. Their decision legalizes same-sex marriage throughout the United States. This is a major milestone in U. S. history. Click through to read the full text of the decision on the Supreme Court website, or on the Mother Jones website, with additional information on the SCOTUS blog. The... Read more
My review of Maurice Casey’s book Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? has been published in Review of Biblical Literature. Below is an excerpt from the end of the review. Please click through to read the rest. I suspect that many will find the tone of Casey’s volume rather too acerbic—especially if they have never had to deal with online mythicists themselves. One must keep in mind the risks that were involved in writing a book like this. As scientists and... Read more
CFP: Sacred Texts and Comics: Religion, Faith, and Graphic Narratives Ken Koltun-Fromm, Haverford College ([email protected]) Assaf Gamzou, Israeli Cartoon Museum ([email protected]) Call for Papers Sacred Texts and Comics: Religion, Faith, and Graphic Narratives The last decade has produced critical and expressive studies in sacred canonical texts and comics. Witness, for example, the artistic works from R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis (2009) and JT Waldman’s Megillat Esther (2005), as well as scholarly publications from Karline McLain’s India’s Immortal Comic Books (2009), A.... Read more
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