I was delighted to have the opportunity to make a guest appearance in Matthew Korpman’s online class about the historical Jesus. Given my choice of topics, I asked to speak about John the Baptist. I also asked him and the students for permission for the class to be recorded. As I mention in the video above, there are multiple reasons why I try to record and share lectures and guest speaking appearances that I make. One is a desire to... Read more
Some academics can trace their academic genealogy back quite far. For example, a while back Sy Garte mentioned the illustrious connections in his academic heritage. He also highlighted the website The Academic Family Tree, which alas has very little when it comes to theology and religion. When I initially tried to see if I could start with my Doktorvater (i.e. my PhD supervisor) and trace back to my Doktorgrossvater, my Doktorurgroßvater, and so on, I soon hit worse dead ends than in... Read more
The Last Day is here. Oh, sorry, I mean the last day is here. The Last Day may be a future Enoch Seminar conference, but this is the final day of the 2020 online one on Evil. The recap session started off with Archie Wright highlighting terminology and insider vs. outsider language as particularly important. The super-human element in some systems of thought when it comes to evil, and the names used, are noteworthy. Belial comes up a lot, and... Read more
The third day began with a recap and some reflections on major themes and important points that were made. Jason Zurawski thought the discussion of how the texts connected evil with women was particularly important, as was the diversity of views and perspectives. Kelley Coblentz Bautch drew some connections between presentations and was grateful for the attention to how women are depicted in the texts. Gabriele Boccaccini highlighted the importance of power relations and dynamics. Larry Schiffman said he often... Read more
The second day began with a look back on the first day of the first ever Enoch Seminar in this format, as well as the substantive content. Archie Wright suggested that even more attention probably deserves to be given to the differing degrees of interest in the garden/Adam and Eve story in different streams of Judaism. The issue of how evil is defined and the extent of interest is also important, as is the use of evil to motivate communities,... Read more
Here is my recap of the first day of the first ever Enoch Seminar meeting held completely online, which began yesterday. The first day began with opening ceremonies that offered a retrospective going back to the early 1970s with Bob Kraft’s seminar focused on the pseudepigrapha and the publication of Jewish pseudepigrapha that had been previously largely ignored by academics working in both ancient Judaism and early Christianity. John Collins and Amy-Jill Levine provided some interesting anecdotes about those early... Read more
I wrote something in a message to a friend that I thought might be worth sharing with blog readers as well: Doctrines are not supposed to be the object of your faith, God is. Thinking seriously about doctrine and subjecting your beliefs you serious scrutiny is one practical way of putting God first, showing that you are willing to seek God with your whole heart and when necessary smash a few of your long-cherished idols. Our sensitivity when our idols... Read more
I found myself thinking of the Bechdel Test as I worked on my book What Jesus Learned From Women, and contemplated mentioning it in the book. For anyone who may not be familiar with it, the Bechdel Test applies three criteria to a movie: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man. That’s surely a minimum standard to which any story should be held. The Bechdel Test... Read more
I was heartbroken to learn yesterday that my dear mentor, my doctoral supervisor at the University of Durham, my dear friend ever since James D. G. Dunn (Jimmy to his friends) has died. No one who has studied the New Testament at any level will be unfamiliar with the name. He is perhaps best known of late for his work on Paul, in particular his role in taking the insights of E. P. Sanders about ancient Judaism and finding a... Read more
I’m not sure how I missed that Arthur C. Clarke’s story Childhood’s End had inspired Pink Floyd to write a song by the same name. It is from one of their earlier albums, Obscured by Clouds, but I love all their eras from oldest to most recent, and so there’s really no excuse for me to have missed that. I’m sure I’ve heard the song before, but its name and source of title/inspiration wasn’t something that I’d become aware of... Read more
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