Via Pinterest. Einstein is purported to have said “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Whatever you think of the Bible, those thoughts should reflect what the Bible actually is. And there are a great many people who embrace it or reject it not as a complex compilation of diverse literature, but on the basis of a mistaken illusion that it is something else, something much simpler, clearer, and very different from the actual Bible. Read more
From the creator of PHD comics, courtesy of the Chronicle of Higher Education. I was glad to discover that there is in fact a PHD comics YouTube channel, with other cool stuff, such as this: Read more
For those of us who’ve long been waiting, there is good news: the mobile app for the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in November is now available! ANNUAL MEETING MOBILE APP IS AVAILABLE! Plan Your Meeting with the free Annual Meetings mobile app! AAR and SBL introduces the use of Mobile Meeting Guide technology to provide members with a technically reliable, intuitive, and functional meeting solution. The app will provide attendees with: The entire... Read more
David Hayward’s cartoon gets at a serious question. Read more
Randall Tan passed on this information, which is also on the Biblical Humanities website: The proposed Global Education & Research Technology (GERT) section at SBL is organizing additional meetings on Friday, Nov 22, 2013, from 9 a.m.-2 p.m., just prior to the start of the SBL Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. This is in addition to our two normally-scheduled sessions during SBL (for details on those sessions, please seehttp://biblicalhumanities.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=107). We have an informal agenda & meeting structure with distinct topics... Read more
Here are two cartoons I came across today, one of which I had seen before, the other of which was new to me. Read more
Richard Carrier gave a talk which is on YouTube, “Imagining the Study of Jesus without Religion.” Historians have worked hard to set aside those demands and desires arising from religious convictions out of the picture when looking at the figure of Jesus. They have done so so successfully that time and again they have produced a portrait of Jesus so disturbing to Christians that the idea that he wasn’t a historical figure – that he was from the beginning the... Read more
Tertullian had some very direct things to say about Jesus, warfare, and weapons. A sizeable portion of American Christians think that Tertullian got Jesus wrong. And, conversely, if Tertullian understood Jesus correctly, then a sizeable portion of Christians in American (though by no means all) actually (whether they admit it or not) think Jesus was wrong to deprive Peter of his second amendment rights. For more discussion if this topic, a synchroblog on #thenewpacifism has been proposed. Read more
I’ve previously shared some of the Hymns of the God’s Gardeners from Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Year of the Flood. Today in my class on religion and science fiction, we finished talking about the novel, and focused on the theology of the God’s Gardeners, and I learned that in the audiobook the hymns are actually included in their musical rendition by Orville Stoeber. And so I thought I would share the lyrics of another of the hymns, “The Last Mile“: The... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In