I came across the above image on the blog Brian of Morbius. Science fiction, like this parable of Jesus, has often proven useful in challenging our tendencies to stereotype and be prejudiced. Read more
I came across the above image on the blog Brian of Morbius. Science fiction, like this parable of Jesus, has often proven useful in challenging our tendencies to stereotype and be prejudiced. Read more
The recent statement by a Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly illustrates well why historical Jesus research is so important. Jesus has become a powerful myth, indeed more than one, and has been coopted in the service of a great many ideologies. Nothing provides as effective a counter to the infinite range of things that Jesus has become and may yet become, than historical evidence does. Ironically, Kelly was emphasizing that Santa Claus was white, just like Jesus (and equally historical,... Read more
Lecture by Lawrence Schiffman Read more
The students in my Religion and Science Fiction class this semester had as one of their assignments to write a short story. One student’s story was not only significantly longer than the others, but it seems to me to be of publishable quality. Although I am a science fiction fan, I must confess that most of my reading of short stories has been in book collections rather than when they first appear in periodicals. And so I thought I would... Read more
IO9 made a list of “The 9 Most Baffling Bible Passages.” Some of them really are baffling even to all the scholars I’ve read or spoken with about them. Others make more sense with some background information. If you made a list of the most baffling Bible passages, which ones would be the same as those on the IO9 list, and which would be different? And just to make it that little bit more challenging, of your choices, how many... Read more
Yesterday I saw this on Facebook: the Job Biblical Action Figure. Here’s a picture from Amazon.com: Apparently for a mere $39.95 you can own this sore-covered depiction of Job. Add three friends and a pile of ashes and you’ve got yourself a story. The same seller has WWF and Final Fantasy figures which I am sure can double as Job’s friends and Elihu. Please don’t get me one of these for Christmas. I’d much rather have The Force Star Wars... Read more
The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive Steven Colbert offers wonderful satirical treatment of the latest coverage of the “War on Christmas” (HT Hemant Mehta). Read more
Via Humor Train Read more
I’ve been eagerly looking forward to the appearance of Bart Ehrman’s one-volume textbook on the entire Bible. For those of us who teach a single-semester course covering the Bible, using separate textbooks on the Hebrew Bible and New Testament may be too much. And so I was understandably delighted to receive a copy of Ehrman’s book, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, from Oxford University Press. The volume looks fantastic. It tackles what the Bible is, assuming no prior... Read more
In reading Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood in my science fiction class this semester, one of the topics that it raised pertains to conspiracy theories. How do we avoid the shoddy thinking that typical conspiracy theories cultivate? And if we do that, being skeptical even of those so-called skeptics, then will we be ill-prepared to spot real conspiracies – since, after all, conspiracies do sometimes occur? This connects naturally with another topic we touched on, which is ancient... Read more
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