I have been trying not to even think about what my next book might be after I wrap up the current project on John the Baptist. But as I’ve been moving towards completion of the current project, some of the points of intersection with other areas have grabbed my interest not just in relation to John the Baptist, but in their own right. One of those is the Synoptic Problem, i.e. the subject of how the Gospels of Mark, Matthew,... Read more
Forgive me readers…it has been eleven days since my last blog post. That Catholic allusion seemed like an appropriate way to start this post about the topic that drew me out of my sabbatical blog lull: the hilarious, profoundly moving, hard to categorize TV series Mrs. Davis. Like Everything Everywhere All At Once, Mrs. Davis manages to be ludicrously silly, literally laugh out loud funny, and so emotional that I got choked up. This seems to be an emerging genre of its... Read more
I apologize that it has taken me until now to blog about season 1 of Ms. Marvel. It is obviously great simply as yet another superhero television series, but this one is going to be of particular interest to those who teach about religious studied in general and Islam in particular, as well as those involved in interfaith efforts. I made notes as I watched it but didn’t turn it into a full-fledged blog post. Now let me just provide... Read more
I heard a preacher recently who claimed that babies crying for food and not being satisfied unless they got what they demanded was evidence of their inherent selfishness and thus sinfulness. At one point in the past I might actually have nodded in agreement, or at least not objected. This time I was quite horrified. I wrote a draft blog post and then set it aside. But then my Sunday school class turned its attention to the creation stories in... Read more
I made an appearance on the Unrelenting Love YouTube channel and spoke about my book What Jesus Learned from Women as well as about my work on the intersection of science fiction with theology. There are three segments and you can find all of them in a playlist here. Here are the individual videos: I should also share some of the memes made by my students this semester, which I have circulated on social media but never shared here on... Read more
As a follow-up to my post about so-called Doubting Thomas and the story about him in the Gospel of John, it is perhaps worth pointing out that the very same thing that is said about Thomas, almost in every detail, is said about the rest of the Twelve. Luke 24:1-12 says: On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from... Read more
I was asked what I would have preached on if I had been called upon to preach this morning, the Sunday after Easter in the Western calendar (and this year Easter Sunday itself for the Eastern Orthodox). My answer was that I would emphasize that Thomas’ experience was not about believing without evidence, the inappropriateness of doubt, or having an experience that then precludes doubt and uncertainty. The story in the Gospel of Matthew set at a mountain in Galilee... Read more
The recording of my talk about Google searches, Chat-GPT, and the computers on Star Trek is now available. I will share it at the end of this post. Let me here illustrate the key point. OpenAI has emphasized from the outset what Chat-GPT is. It emulates human speech patterns. It does this remarkably well. They have been very clear what it is not. It is not a search engine. It is not designed, as it shuffles language into new patterns,... Read more
I wanted to check whether there was any record I might have missed of Herod Antipas beheading someone else, and so I decided to use it as a test of one of the things I suspected ChatGPT might be useful for. Here is how it went. It will be the contrast with Google search results that makes the point, so read on… Me: Did Herod Antipas behead anyone else besides John the Baptist? ChatGPT: It is possible that Herod Antipas... Read more
The early Jewish Christian Gospel of the Ebionites said that John ate ἐγκρίς rather than ἀκρίς. The latter means “locust” and that’s what we have in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew (Luke omits this detail). The former? You’ll often hear it rendered into English as a “pancake” made with oil and honey. That definition seems to be heavily influenced by the fact that the word occurs in the LXX (Greek translation) of Exodus 16:31. The term actually appears to... Read more
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