2013-04-11T14:42:27-04:00

There are several interesting topics that I think I can bring together under this heading. First, Mark Goodacre has blogged about the strange experience of having a peer-reviewed journal article be written which interacts with a post on his blog! And so he raises the question of whether this is flattering or worrying, since often times we post our ideas on our blogs in a less polished form than we would in the final submitted version of an article. See... Read more

2013-04-11T14:28:47-04:00

Below is a song I wrote a while back, but haven’t shared publicly until now. I wrote it after a discussion in my Sunday school class about creeds, in which I asked whether a list of beliefs ought to be what characterizes us, or something else. Here are the lyrics, which are also in the video: Creed I believe in God, the boundless Love that never knows an end A love for enemy as well as friend I believe in... Read more

2013-04-11T11:33:52-04:00

I am grateful to Eerdmans for having sent me review copies of two commentaries on the Gospel of John which they recently published. As I am teaching my course on the Gospel of John this semester, I hoped to blog about both commentaries as I encountered points of note or interest. Alas, it has taken me until now to get around to blogging about the introductions! The two commentaries are those by Urban von Wahlde in the Eerdmans Critical Commentary... Read more

2013-04-11T08:28:52-04:00

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

2013-04-10T15:10:13-04:00

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

2013-04-10T10:19:33-04:00

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

2013-04-10T08:41:57-04:00

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

2013-04-09T22:06:10-04:00

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

2013-04-09T20:44:10-04:00

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

2013-04-09T12:11:59-04:00

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

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