All readers of biblioblogs presumably know Steve Wiggins’ name, and those who publish academic books may know him as editor for Oxford University Press. As a religion scholar and author of academic books and articles, Steve’s interest in recent years has focused on the genre of horror, leading to the publication of his two most recent books, Holy Horror and Nightmares with the Bible. I am delighted to be able to draw these books to your attention and to share with you... Read more
Our students are in many respects already cyborgs. I’m not sure educators have fully adapted to this reality. We adjusted to chemical enhancements in athletics by implementing drug testing. But the truth is that nowadays most of the chemical enhancements are things that would be used regularly and not just on the occasion of a competition, to build muscle strength. This is also the approach we have taken to the earliest technological enhancements: the internet, the phone, the ability to... Read more
I thought about calling this blog post something more controversial, like “Jesus did you learn what Mary knew?” It would have highlighted the theme and indicated that this was inspired by my thoughts about the song “Mary Did You Know?” and the response to it I shared yesterday. The best comment I received in response to the thoughts I shared there was from someone who pointed out that all mothers think their sons are God and can walk on water!... Read more
I had this wonderful response to “Mary, Did You Know?” drawn to my attention and I had to share it: As a response that accepts the traditional story as given, it strikes me as excellent, managing to make its point forcefully while remaining lighthearted. When writing What Jesus Learned from Women I wrestled with the fact that there are many places where, if we are to say anything at all about women’s perspectives in the life of Jesus or anywhere else... Read more
Several things came to my attention so that I decided to bring them together in a blog post. I have to start with an interactive choose your own adventure online learning site that leads you through a shiur (Talmudic learning session) that explores the question of whether a robot can be a person from the perspective of the Jewish tradition, discussing Torah, rabbinic literature, the golem traditions, and much else. Next is a post about playing Settlers of Catan through... Read more
There is a famous story about how Martin Luther King persuaded Nichelle Nichols to stay on Star Trek. One of the things he said was that if she left, they’d likely replace her character Lt. Uhura with a blonde white woman. It turns out that one comic book series did that anyway. I ought to have known this. At some point I did in fact know it. But at the time it must have seemed merely strange, in a comic... Read more
I wrote back in 2006 that I found an article published in the New York Times, “For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is ‘God’s Foreign Policy’,” deeply disturbing. The same views continue to be widely held and so it seems worth revisiting this topic. It is not that I think supporting Israel is in itself a bad thing – far from it. But the combination of a number of specific features of American right-wing fundamentalist Christians’ support of Israel I find problematic as a... Read more
Having finally wrapped up work on some other projects, including wrapping up loose ends and what are hopefully the final revisions to those book manuscripts and chapters, I am excited to have turned my attention to really getting to work in a focused way on my open textbook (or as I prefer to call it, open text+musicbook) on the Bible and Music. I start, as the class I teach also does, with music behind and in the Bible, before focusing... Read more
I’m still trying to figure out how Trump supporters make logical sense of his claims about election fraud. In the period before the 2016 election Trump claimed that the system was rigged against him. He won anyway. Now when he has the presidency and ran for re-election he made the same claims in the period before the 2020 election, but while the attempt to steal the election didn’t work when he wasn’t in office, he was powerless to stop it... Read more
I know I’ve felt that dreams I’ve had in the past have conveyed other kinds of insights before. But I think a dream I had recently may be the first that I felt I learned something from about a contemporary ethical debate. In the dream I was a person who owned a boat. In real life, I’ve never owned a boat and have rarely been on one. In the dream, someone approached me to transport something for them, essentially to... Read more
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