Just making the pun in the title would have been good enough reason to write something along these lines. But there is more to it. I want to make a case for spiritual discernment as well as information literacy. The pun occurred to me in the context of a discussion of the story of “Doubting Thomas” in my Sunday school class. Someone said that we could do with more doubt in this era in which so many people are duped... Read more
I have been working this semester on creating a first draft of an open textbook on The Bible and Music and have the draft shared online so that I can use it with students to gather feedback in the course that inspired it and for which I am, in the first instance, developing it (although I obviously hope it will be more broadly useful). I am grateful to the PALSave initiative of PALNI, the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana, for... Read more
A reminder about my lecture this week, on April 15th, on the subject of “The Past, Present, and Future of Christianity in Science Fiction.” Hosted by the University of Michigan and its Michigan Center for Early Christian Studies, this is an online lecture that will be given live on Zoom, with opportunity for questions afterwards. Here is the registration link. As I have been both working on the lecture and planning to share a reminder here on the blog, I... Read more
I had a few questions shared with me that occurred to a listener while listening to my appearance on WFYI’s “All IN” on March 31st. You can listen to the show on the station’s website as well as the main NPR site. Here are the things they were interested in hearing more about: Role of women in the Old Testament and Jewish faith – any potential impact on Jesus – how it differs from the New Testament and Christianity. One... Read more
I finally had the opportunity to begin listening to Kristin Du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne on the same day a student introduced me to a song about American Christian culture, “John Deere, John Cougar, and John 3:16.” Four Johns. Only one biblical and he is last, and represented by a verse so often taken out of context, and featured often on t-shirts and bumper stickers. That is very interestingly a thread that connects the book and the song. Both... Read more
The bookseller Christianbooks.com provides an opportunity for authors to share additional information about their books featured on the site. Here’s what I wrote: Tell us a little about yourself. I am the Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. What was your motivation behind this project? The idea for the book was prompted by a student who approached me about writing an honors thesis, who was interested in exploring the relationship between her... Read more
Call for Abstracts Dune and Philosophy Edited by Kevin S. Decker The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series To propose ideas for future volumes in the Blackwell series please contact the Series Editor, William Irwin, at [email protected] The Dune series of books is often compared to The Lord of the Rings for its scope, depth, and wide influence on speculative fiction. Works focusing on any of the six Dune books by Frank Herbert and thefilm projects by Alejandro Jodorowsky and... Read more
I received a question via email related to my book (although since I address this in the book I am guessing they actually read my summary in a blog post or something similar). When I realized they were going to try to continue the discussion I did what I always do and moved the conversation to the blog, since others may have the same thoughts and questions, and still others may not but may nonetheless find the topic interesting. The... Read more
I have a confession to make. While I like travelling, and appreciate seeing people face to face, I don’t miss in-person conferences the way others seem to, and am not particularly eager for this longstanding academic practice to get back to “business as usual.” This isn’t because I am an introvert. It is one of the most remarkable positive experiences in my life that, for quite some time, when attending in-person conferences, people have come up to me and started... Read more
I had a funny exchange on Twitter, hinting at having a new interpretation of the story about the woman accused of committing adultery found in John 8 in many manuscripts (as I did here when my Biblical Archaeology Review article related to this part of the book came out). This was in response to what I thought was a brilliantly clever tweet (even though I don’t think the expression existed in Jesus’ time) by Traci Rhoades. She said: Remember when Jesus... Read more
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