Thanks to Michael Barber for pointing out the existence of a blog which posts the latest tables of contents from journals in Biblical and theological studies. Read more
A great quote from Rebecca Trotter. Read more
Bart Ehrman’s latest book How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee is now available. I’ve received my copy and will be reading it and blogging about it soon. Jeremy Bouma has already pointed out something important, which is typical of Ehrman’s books for a popular audience. He is simply popularizing and communicating what most scholars think. His view of the evolution of Christology is not something new and innovative. It is what scholars like Charles... Read more
A commenter on a recent post at IO9 about fundamentalist Christian attacks on Dungeons and Dragons came up with this wonderful quip: It was never a fair fight between fundamentalist Christianity and D&D. One was a dangerous system full of dark mysticism and threats to warp a young mind beyond repair, and the other was a tabletop RPG. It isn’t just a clever reversal. It really is the case that fundamentalism has people imagining that they are part of a... Read more
I suspect that this is a day that many young Evangelicals (some of whom will be looking for a different name for themselves) will remember in years to come. If you haven’t been following the news, the major Christian charity World Vision decided to embrace married same-sex couples as employees – and now, shortly after the announcement, they have reversed that decision. What led to the change? The word that springs immediately to mind is bullying. Many Evangelicals vocally expressed... Read more
IO9 asked which myths deserve to be made into science fiction movies. One response was the image above. It imagines more or less what Ken Ham’s words could be construed as meaning, when he suggests that humans lived with dinosaurs, and that people may have had more advanced technology before the flood that for some time afterwards. Perhaps we need more young-earth creationist science fiction? Do Stargate and Prometheus spread a literal belief in ancient aliens, or cement its status as science fiction? Read more
Yesterday I started discussing George Orwell’s 1984 in my First Year Seminar class. To illustrate the way information about us is less than private in our time, I had them Google themselves, and also me if they wished to. One student found this: Apparently that James McGrath is J. J. Abrams’ father-in-law. It isn’t me. But I still like the fact that I have a namesake who has been in Star Trek movies, and that it is possible for someone to mistakenly think... Read more
The publicity for Ken Ham’s latest book, Six Days: The Age of the Earth and the Decline of the Church, says the following: Today, most Bible colleges, seminaries, K-12 Christian schools, and now even parts of the homeschool movement do not accept the first eleven chapters of Genesis as literal history. They try to fit the supposed billions of years into Genesis, and some teach evolution as fact. Our churches are largely following suit. What fantastic news! Read more
Given the interest generated by Maurice Casey’s book and Richard Carrier’s blogging about it, I thought I should turn my 2013 SBL conference paper on mythicism and academic freedom into an article quickly. And so I am pleased to say that “Mythicism and the Mainstream: The Rhetoric and Realities of Academic Freedom” is now available on the Bible and Interpretation website. It focuses mainly on the broader question and on the specific example of Thomas Brodie’s work. In other news,... Read more
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