I am so thrilled to be able to share the amazing artwork that Macey Dickerson created for the cover of my forthcoming book What Jesus Learned from Women. I was happy when Cascade indicated they were willing for me to commission artwork from a local artist for the cover, and the result exceeded my already very high expectations knowing Macey Dickerson’s work. As I said on Facebook, they say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but thanks to this... Read more
This post is an effort to back up and ask about the roots of the worldview and subculture that led to the Capitol insurrection in Washington DC. It has become clear from numerous examples that it is not the Christian character or use of scripture that leads Republican Trumpists who claim to be Christians to oppose all things Democrat, at times violently. John Fea noted how frequently Barack Obama quoted scripture, and that Joe Biden may outdo him on this... Read more
Our contemporary world witnesses contrasting approaches to sacred spaces. While in some regions (especially in Western Europe) there is a decrease in the interest for religious buildings as places for worship due to the decline of the number of practicing believers, and they are sometimes reused as public institutions, hotels or restaurants, in other regions one can testify for a revival of an intense attention to religious architecture. This is manifested either through the large-scale construction of national churches (e.g.,... Read more
Venue: Lindell Boulevard Speakers at this event: Frances Howard-Snyder (Western Washington University) Mark Silcox (University of Central Oklahoma) Lisa Schoenberg (Slippery Rock University) David Baker (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories Book Launch and On-the-Spot Writing Contest Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories: Exploring the Boundaries of the Possible (Bloomsbury 2021, edited by Helen De Cruz, Johan De Smedt, and Eric Schwitzgebel) We are happy to announce the approaching publication of the anthology Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories. This... Read more
We began the final day of the Enoch Seminar conference on John the Baptist with a recap (and I provided one on my blog once again). Al Baumgarten calculated that we will have spent 32 hours together talking about John the Baptist by the end of the last day of the conference, a striking figure when we consider how few words we have about him in the New Testament and Josephus. As we started the day thinking about messianism and... Read more
Day Three of the Enoch Seminar conference on John the Baptist began once again with a recap of the previous day. (You can read my notes from the day in my blog post.) Gabriele Boccaccini had suggested that we focus our thoughts on the terminology of sectarianism. Right away the references we had been making to current events led me to think it would be useful to focus a conference on sectarianism ancient and modern. Then as now, people aligned themselves... Read more
These are my notes from and thoughts about the second day of the Enoch Seminar conference on John the Baptist. Enoch Seminar meetings tend to begin with a recap session each subsequent day. They provide a helpful opportunity to remind ourselves about things that were said and to draw attention to points that were felt to be significant. For me, one particularly significant point was the highlighting of the puzzling idea that John could be Elijah and that Jesus could be... Read more
Yesterday was the first day of the Enoch Seminar Nangeroni Meeting conference taking place online this week, focused on John the Baptist. I’ve obviously been incredibly excited about this event, since I am working on a major book about John the Baptist. Gabriele Boccaccini started things off with an overview of the reception history of John the Baptist, including literature and film as well as scholarship. In the process he highlighted the incredible wealth of information on this subject available... Read more
As I was thinking about what I should blog about next that would be relevant to current events, Murray Hogg wrote a comment on Facebook that motivated this post. Here’s what he wrote: It’s kind of bizarre that only a few short years ago Evangelicals were obsessed with berating the emerging church as “postmodern” because of their (alleged) rejection of objective truth. There’s definitely some bizarre epistemological shenanigans going on that leave these people at the mercy of science denial,... Read more
Information about an essay prize that many of my readers ought to know about: CRINT Essay Prize in Early Jewish and Christian Studies COMPENDIA RERUM IUDAICARUM AD NOVUM TESTAMENTUM Editors: Shaye Cohen (Harvard University), Matthijs den Dulk (Radboud University Nijmegen), David Goodblatt, z’’l (University of California at San Diego), Christine Hayes (Yale University), Richard Kalmin (Jewish Theological Seminary of America), Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr (University of Jena), Pieter van der Horst (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences), Huub van de Sandt (University of... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In