This post was prompted by a piece written by Carol Westbrook in which she writes: Anyone can take lessons. Studies have shown that you could become proficient in just about any skill, from sports to playing guitar, after you have put in about 10,000 hours of practice. But that doesn’t lead to musical ability. Putting in your hours is learning by memorization and rote; children who don’t have musical ability will hate it and quit when they have the chance.... Read more
Recently in my Sunday school class we talked about the possibility of inviting others to join us from further afield than has normally been possible. Meeting via Zoom, we have had regular attendees join us from the car or while otherwise not at home, and even one longstanding but long-relocated church members start coming. In short, the class has grown since the pandemic changed how we meet, and has made new ways of meeting possible. We this wondered whether this... Read more
I want to share a number of things connected with my course on Religion and Science Fiction that I am teaching this semester. First, I’ve been making videos to introduce certain topics, and I have made a few sci-fi opening credits sequences to precede them. As I mentioned recently, after I shared my initial versions of them on social media, a way was proposed to improve them dramatically (in both the literal and figurative senses of that word). If you’re... Read more
I must say that I am very glad to have ended my time as Faculty Director of the Core Curriculum this past summer. I found it rewarding and was happy to devote myself to trying to make the core and its processes function as smoothly as possible for the benefit of our students and colleagues. There were challenges during my three years in the role, but still more loom on the horizon or have already befallen us, and I am... Read more
Elizabeth Raine and John Squires write: Jesus…suddenly finds himself in a position where, faced with this challenge, he has to make a choice. Does he stick with the tradition, thereby putting himself in the same position of hypocrisy that the he has just accused the Pharisees of, or does he admit to himself that he needs to put his money where his mouth is and acknowledge that the woman is right in the truth she is proclaiming? There is no... Read more
Mormonism and SF Special Issue of SFRA Review, vol. 51, no. 3, Summer 2021 Edited by Adam McLain Background Since its inception in the early nineteenth century, Mormonism has shot for the stars. With angelic visitors, planetary afterlives, and astronomical texts written by ancient patriarchs, the theology and history of Mormonism is ripe for analysis and criticism through the lens of SF. In addition to the beliefs, practitioners of the religion—the largest denomination of which is formally known as The... Read more
I had been meaning to blog about this for a while, when a blog post from John Fea prompted me to finally do it. Ironically, my draft post was about Syriac and his was about English documents including some that are in typeface. Here is his post to start with. You’ll see how the two connect: https://thewayofimprovement.com/2020/06/24/the-boston-public-library-needs-your-help-transcribing-anti-slavery-documents/ I have been following details about progress not only in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) applied to ancient languages and their alphabets (such as... Read more
I appreciated Jason Staples’ recent guest posts on Bart Ehrman’s blog. In them he discusses one of the many challenging issues of interpretation in Paul’s letters. What did Paul mean when he wrote in his letter to the church in Rome that “all Israel will be saved”? It took me far longer than it ought to have to rethink that text in light of Paul’s expectation that the end of history and dawn of the kingdom of God would come... Read more
The Amherst Papyrii feature psalms in Aramaic that show signs of having been originally composed in Hebrew. They aren’t from the Book of Psalms in the Bible, although they have a relationship to the psalms we find there. ASOR had a blog post about them a couple of years ago and ever since I’ve been meaning to blog about them. In particular I’m wondering whether anyone has set these ancient hymns to music. There is a wealth of potential inspiration in... Read more
Call for Proposals The Palgrave Handbook of Popular Culture as Philosophy Editor-in Chief: David Kyle Johnson The Palgrave Handbook of Popular Culture and Philosophy is an online first/living reference handbook of articles that treat works of popular culture as philosophy. The main goal is to identify and critique the philosophical ideas presented and arguments made by works of popular culture, such as films, television shows, video games, comedians, and graphic novels. Some already published examples include articles that evaluate... Read more
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