Several posts related to the Jewishness of Jesus have appeared on blogs I read over the past couple of days. Anthony Le Donne has the first post in a series asking what it means to say that Jesus was Jewish. Joseph Hoffmann provides a list of things that the New Testament says about Jesus which are not myths. He also makes a new year’s resolution: My semi-sincere New Year’s resolution for 2013 is to be nicer to the mythicists, because... Read more
Philippians 4:4 (NIV): “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Read more
If there is something that has distinguished 2012 from all previous years that I have been blogging, it is the fact that this is the year that the Facebook page “Christians Against the Tea Party” turned quotes from my blog into images that could be shared on Facebook. Here they are, as well as one I made myself, with links to the posts that are the sources of the quotations: Source: “The Bible, Inspiration, and Fundamentalism” Source: “Can Non-Liberal Christianity... Read more
Via IO9 I learned of a series of comics depicting Captain America’s inner reflections as he seeks to cope with the realities he encounters on waking up in our modern world – and finding himself in the company of Asgardian gods, of course. The one above (of which these are only two panels out of six) gets at the heart of what makes reflecting on a movie like The Avengers interesting for those of us interested in religion and science... Read more
I commented previously on some of the conservative Christian reactions to the Newtown school shooting, including in particular the attempt to connect it with the removal of prayer from schools. Today in church, as a longstanding public school principal who is a member of my church gave a children’s talk about prayer, my thoughts turned to the subject again, and I noticed a contradiction in one of the responses a conservative Christian made to one of my posts. I suggested... Read more
In a comment on yesterday’s post depicting a “Bad Samaritan,” it was suggested that there were ways of depicting a conservative American outlook that might be more accurate. It inspired the above image. What do you think? If the “Good Samaritan” in the story in Luke’s Gospel reflected conservative American values, rather than those of Jesus and early Christianity, do you think the character would have set off on a quest of retribution against those who left a man for... Read more
The episode “A Day in the Death” from the second season of Torchwood has not just vague religious themes or overtones, but explicit reference to the story of Jesus. And so it makes for an interesting starting point for a discussion of religion and science fiction. The story focuses on Owen Harper, who died in a previous episode, only to be brought back to life using alien technology, and now, for some reason, he remains conscious and human and active,... Read more
Earlier today I created an image to illustrate one popular inversion of the Bible, and now I am sharing another, which I found rather than created. If the Samaritan who behaved as depicted in the story in Luke came to be known as the good Samaritan, then must we not say that one who speaks and behaves in the quite opposite manner depicted in the image above would be a bad Samaritan? If so, then what ought we to say... Read more
It took me until now to get around to watching the movie The Avengers. But I’m glad I did. In addition to action and great (if not scientifically feasible) special effects, it contains a great deal that is food for thought and discussion, for those of us interested in the intersection of religion and popular culture in general, or religion and comic books and/or science fiction in particular. Perhaps it is obvious that a movie which includes gods as major... Read more
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