This icon came to my attention via Unvirtuous Abbey on Facebook. Star Wars episodes I-VI are profoundly about redemption, about a man who turns to evil in order to try to hold on to someone he loves, ends up harming that person in the process, and eventually is helped to find his way back from the darkness by his son. And so a depiction of St. Vader – or should it be St. Skywalker? – seems highly appropriate. Read more
Tom Verenna shared a really interesting assignment from a class about the historical Jesus that he is taking. It asked students to write an obituary for Jesus. He did something even more interesting with it, creating an epitaph on the model of ancient funerary inscriptions, rather than a modern-day type of obituary. I won’t summarize it here, since I think it would be interesting for people to try to come up with their own before doing so. But after you... Read more
As we reached the end of Hebrews in my Sunday school class last week, I was struck once again by how there are texts which are so clearly at odds with mythicism, and yet which are explained away with a little hand-waving. One example is the reference to Jesus suffering “outside the gate” (Hebrews 13:12). Earl Doherty suggests that this is the gate of heaven, but that is not something that the author has thus far suggested. The author clearly... Read more
Rock and Theology linked to Commonweal Magazine which shared this rock version of the Lord’s Prayer, which reached No.4 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart back in 1973. Sister Janet Mead is one of a very small number of nuns to have a gold record. Enjoy! Read more
The BBC announced that it would be releasing a new trailer today celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who. Well, it’s here, and it gives some clues about “The Day of the Doctor.” Enjoy! Read more
That the view that suffering is due to sin is still prevalent, even in traditions that have the Book of Job, just goes to show how tenacious that way of viewing things is. It is easier to accept the view of Job's friends (even if one accepts as authoritative the Book of Job, which condemns them for not speaking truthfully about God), than to deal with the mystery and uncertainty that Job came to embrace. Read more
As a result of a comment on my blog, I’m wondering whether there is any book that focuses scholarly attention on those places in the Bible where authors assume the pre-scientific understanding of that time. The firmament, bees from a lion corpse and other references to spontaneous generation, taxonomies of animals, celestial movements, and so on. Is there such a book? If not, would it be worth putting such a volume together? I know that John Walton’s work (e.g. Genesis... Read more
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