When we recently discussed the Book of Job in my class on the Bible, I couldn’t help but wonder what Job 39:5 sounded like to my students. In the NRSV it reads: Who has let the wild ass go free? Who has loosed the bonds of the swift ass… If you are a teenager, is the first thing you think of this? Hopefully someone thought of this: Read more
I blogged previously about the episode “The Bells of St. John,” but did not dive in detail into its metaphorical treatment of how technology has taken hold of our lives. The idea of souls being uploaded and trapped in a world wide web, and crying out for help, sounds less like Twitter specifically, as per Clara’s joke, and more like the entire internet. We are increasingly entangled and inseparable from our devices – and that isn’t an entirely negative thing.... Read more
Via Facebook. I would have called this “Rejoice in the Tard” but I’m not sure that everyone would know that that is the cat’s nickname, shortened from Tardar Sauce. I made a grumpy cat image with that verse at the end of last year: Read more
This book came to my attention recently via Facebook. There is also a promotional video which contains only text plus images that can be found on the internet. This self-published book is unlikely to offer anything useful to scholars interested in the Mandaeans. That doesn’t mean, however, that it is impossible there were connections between proto-Mandaeans and early Christians which could be explored in a scholarly manner. (In using the term proto-Mandaeans, I am acknowledging that our texts from and about... Read more
HT Hemant Mehta. If you find those videos of interest, you may also be interested in some of Corvino’s other videos, and his recent book, What’s Wrong with Homosexuality? (Philosophy in Action). Corvino is a philosophy professor at Wayne State University. Read more
A book to which I contributed the essay on religion in science fiction is now available for Kindle at less than half the list price of the enormous print volume. The book is Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction, and I am providing the publisher’s description and a list of contents below. Sense of Wonder – A Century of Science Fiction Sense of Wonder is a broad, inexpensive, single-volume anthology designed to give students a sense both of... Read more
I sometimes wonder whether the key promoters of young-earth creationism are atheists trying to make Christians look foolish, and the key promoters of Jesus-mythicism are Christians trying to make atheists look foolish. If not, then there are a lot of people happy to shoot themselves and their stance in the foot. Examples abound… Read more
After I mentioned Paul Regnier’s draft on my blog, Jim West complained that he had hoped the post would offer my own definition of mythicism. Since I plan to contribute to the Wiki too, I thought I should offer my own summary. And so I began writing this post. But then a commenter named Ian summed it up more succinctly than I was going to. He wrote: man->myth or myth->man That sums it up well. In a nutshell, while mainstream... Read more
Paul Regnier shared on his blog that he has written an introductory statement for the TalkHistoricity Wiki, and asks for feedback on it. Please do click through, give it a read, and offer feedback and suggestions! Read more
The classic study of The Four Gospels by B. H. Streeter is available online. I am linking to the chapter on the end of Mark’s Gospel because of my longstanding interest in that subject. Streeter drew the conclusion that John 21 was the lost ending of Mark. I think that putting it that way is problematic, but I do think that John 21 reflects knowledge of a lost ending of the Gospel of Mark, knowledge of which is also reflected... Read more
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