A friend shared this impressive bit of guitar playing by Trace Bundy. Read more
A friend shared this impressive bit of guitar playing by Trace Bundy. Read more
Judy Redman has posted a reply to my own post about memory and orality yesterday. Judy writes: I agree that having composed something doesn’t mean that you will remember it word for word. I do think, however, that when a person has composed a story to illustrate a particular point, s/he is much more likely to reproduce the significant points accurately than is someone who has just heard it. I also think that when you are retelling your own story,... Read more
I came across this video of composer Mark Adorno talking about his opera, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, at UC Davis. I would love to see and hear the opera in its entirety – I love contemporary music, and Gnostic texts, and having heard Sasha Cooke sing here in Indianapolis a few months ago, that makes me even more eager to hear how she performs the role of Mary Magdalene. Read more
Like many New Testament scholars, the work that I do builds on the work of those specifically engaged in the field of New Testament textual criticism. An article by Simon Gathercole in ZNW, “The Titles of the Gospels in the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts,” makes me wonder about the impression that I and most others have gotten from the critical editions of the New Testament. Gathercole points out that the critical apparatus deals with titles appearing at the start of... Read more
Somehow I missed this video when it first appeared, even though it includes more than one student I know, and one who is a religion major. It always makes me proud to see students I have taught showing the strength of character to be leaders and stand for what is right! Read more
The song that my colleague Chad Bauman made in response to my own song Viva la Library had its number of views reset due to some sort of glitch. Friendly competition aside, I feel back that his once astounding number of views has vanished into the ether. And so I thought I would share it again. Below is Viva La Library again – not that it is likely that any blog readers missed it when I shared it previously. What... Read more
I recently had someone say something about “leaving students agape” on Twitter. It is perhaps a professional hazard that I initially thought that “agape” was a transliterated Greek word (meaning love) rather than the English word meaning with one’s mouth hanging open wide. The resulting meanings are quite different! I am now noticing just how often there are instances of the one word being intended where the other could be understood, changing the meaning quite dramatically. Here is one example... Read more
Judy Redman has been offering a wonderful series on memory and the historical Jesus. In the most recent post, part 4, Judy wrote the following about verbatim memory: In addition, having been quite pessimistic about our ability to prove the authenticity of any Jesus tradition or to have the actual words of Jesus, both here and on Michael Kok’s blog, I want to note a counter-argument. Anyone who has read to a small, preliterate child will recognise the speed with which... Read more
Following on from yesterday’s post, here are some Buzzfeed meme renditions of New Testament scenes: What other scenes would be good candidates for Buzzfeedification? Read more
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