This image came my way on Facebook. There is more information about the tree on the National Geograohic website. Of course, by calling this post “tree of knowledge” I will be setting some readers on edge because of the allusion to Genesis. But that reaction itself reflects a problematic understanding of the passage. I doubt there are many people who actually think that living as immature and naive children in a garden forever would be desirable. The story is about... Read more
In case you missed it, here is the story of some past Doctors trying to get into the 50th anniversary special. HT IO9 Read more
For all my Episcopal friends, via Episcopal Church Memes on Facebook. Read more
Yesterday was the last day of AAR/SBL for me. I read a paper on Philippians 2:6-11, considering the relevance of intertextuality, orality, and persuasive rhetoric for how we understand the text, including its Christology and the relation thereof to monotheism. I also had a chance to get to the one paper on the program about Doctor Who, focused on the Mara episode sequence (“Kinda” and “Snakedance”) and its use of Western stereotypes of Buddhism and of ideas and imagery from... Read more
So apparently Thanksgivukkah is what they are calling the convergence of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah in just a couple of days from now. This is not merely a once in a lifetime event, but a once in a civilization event, as the next convergence will be many tens of thousands of years in the future. So get yourself a souvenir t-shirt and a recording of The Thanksgivukkah Medley. This is one to tell the great-great-great-great-grandkids about! Read more
The same person who recently asked me about translation and resurrection drew my attention to this statement by William Lane Craig: In an extra-canonical Jewish writing called The Testament of Job (40), the story is told of the translation of two children killed in the collapse of a house. The children are killed when the house collapses, but when the rescuers clear away the rubble their bodies are not to be found. Meanwhile, the mother sees a vision of the two... Read more
I saw “The Day of the Doctor” twice over the past few days, once on the small screen and once in a movie theater in 3D. It was definitely worth the extra effort to see the latter. The 3D aspect was cool, as was the chance to focus in on detail and catch a few things that I had missed on the first viewing. Also cool were introductory remarks by Strax and the Doctor, especially the latter's mistaken introduction to... Read more
Yesterday I chaired the “Traditions of East Late Antiquity” exploratory session. Apparently exploratory sessions get a set time slot irrespective of the number of papers, and so we had had to set a time limit of 15 minutes each. The result was actually quite remarkable – each paper was focused and fit exactly in the time slot, and was presented in a way that was clear and accessible to the many people present who work in this area but not... Read more
HT Joel Watts Read more
Two boys are exiting Sunday school class. One of them asks the other, “Do you think there really is a Satan?” The other says, “I'm not sure, but I think maybe he is like Santa and the tooth fairy – it is probably actually your dad!” Read more
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