The episode begins with John Locke working at a toy store, and introducing the game Mousetrap. A woman comes up and asks for help, who we later learn is John’s mother. She tells him that he is special, that he is part of a design, and that he has no father, but was immaculately conceived. Locke learns that Emily Locke, his mother, is schizophrenic and had been institutionalized multiple times. In turn he finds his way to Anthony Cooper, his... Read more
The AAR and SBL program books for the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting in November have been online for a while. Below are the sessions I’ll be involved in. Do note the last one – I hope that religion bloggers will come along to that session and discuss the many things that have unfolded in the blogosphere since the AAR and SBL calls for papers closed – that’s one of the positive things about blogging in the academy: discussion can take place in an... Read more
Mark Goodacre mentioned a conference in Denmark in June 2015, “Gospel Interpretation and the Q‐Hypothesis.” I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to make it, but it certainly looks like it is likely to be fantastic, and will at least want to read the papers from the conference when they are published. Call for papers“Gospel Interpretation and the Q‐Hypothesis” International Conference, 21 to 24 June 2015, Roskilde (Denmark) Organizers: Mogens Müller, Stefan Nordgaard, Heike OmerzuThis year, in June, a group of... Read more
Allan Bevere shared the cartoon above. I imagine that some Christians would balk at the notion that Jesus could have been inept at anything. But to suggest that he was good at everything is to deny that he was a human being. I was more concerned, when I saw the cartoon, that some might interpret it as saying that a “call to ministry” is what people get when they don’t know what else to do with their lives. And some people choose that... Read more
This is the episode that introduced the famous numbers. Hurley sees the numbers on a paper that Sayid took from Danielle Rousseau. In a flashback, we learn that he won the lottery with those numbers. Hurley talks about the possibikity that the money is cursed, and his mom hits him saying, “That’s blasphemy – we’re Catholic, we don’t believe in curses.” She makes the sign of the cross more than once. This episode is especially comical, even as it explores... Read more
I am grateful to Joel Watts for pointing out the original Italian text of something that the Pope recently said, which had puzzled me in the English translations I had encountered: Dio non è un demiurgo o un mago, ma il Creatore che dà l’essere a tutti gli enti. L’inizio del mondo non è opera del caos che deve a un altro la sua origine, ma deriva direttamente da un Principio supremo che crea per amore. Il Big-Bang, che oggi si pone... Read more
A comment was left here recently by a mythicist, which asked why, if there was a historical Jesus, he (1) is mentioned for the first time by people other than his followers so much later, (2) none of his contemporaries took an interest in him, and (3) his biography seems pieced together out of parts of the Jewish Scriptures. The same can be said of other figures, like John the Baptist, and even more so, the figure we know only as the... Read more
Via The Skeptic’s Guide to the Internet on Facebook. Read more
Some students in my class on Paul and the early church tried setting up a Twitter account, to tweet what the church in Corinth might have tweeted. They didn’t do much with it (at least, not yet), but even the couple of tweets that are on there are amusing. Read more
What an amazing episode of Doctor Who “Dark Water” is. It starts with Clara speaking intensely with Danny on the phone, including saying that she loves him, and emphasizing that this isn’t just the casual phrase but something deeper. And then he stops responding, and we soon learn that Danny had been hit by a car while Clara was talking to him on the phone, and has been killed. Clara calls the Doctor, and we get the sense that it takes... Read more
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