I use Feedly as a way of managing my reading of blogs and other sources of news. You have probably seen the effect of this. Especially if you’re following me on Twitter or have liked my Facebook page, you’ll know that in addition to my subscriptions providing me with lots and lots of links that can go into blog posts, I share other things I think are interesting all throughout the day, every day. Subscribing to blogs is crucial to... Read more
Continuing the recap of NetVUE’s workshop on vocation and religious studies prior to AAR/SBL 2019 in San Diego, and in fact the same session that I was talking about in my last post, the next presenter (Trina Jones) used the very memorable phrase, “I tend to be a Jackson Pollock kind of thinker.” She shared how she taught an upper-level course, “Interfaith Engagement and Religious Pluralism,” twice, the first time during the Obama administration, the second during the Trump administration. There... Read more
There is a very interesting post by Richard Fellows about the identification of Andronicus and Junia with Chuza and Joanna. One thing the potential significance of which had not previously struck me is that Andronicus is a Greek name and Junia a Latin one, which at least raises the question of whether they are from separate backgrounds. Far from causing a problem for the identification, it might support it, since Chuza is a Nabataean name and Joanna a Jewish one. And... Read more
I was excited to see this call for papers, given how much I’ve come to appreciate the writing of historical fiction as not only a legitimate, but a rigorous and extremely valuable, means of exploring and testing historical hypotheses, and given that this is one of the genres that I hope can find a home when the new journal of fiction by academics, AcademFic, launches in the very near future. But for now, here’s the call for papers: Call for Papers:... Read more
I am delighted to have good news to share that our local academic library consortium PALNI, the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana, has awarded me a grant to support development of the resource I’ve mentioned previously, the creation of a digital textbook on the Bible and music. This is part of their PALSave initiative, generously funded by the Lilly Endowment. There are so many reasons this has the potential to be something great, but the biggest for me is... Read more
Let me start with a meme that came my way on Facebook and which made me chuckle: Now to the main topic of this post, which is associated with the ascension scene, the feast day for which was yesterday in the Western Christian calendar and is a week later in the Eastern calendar. One verse that gets very little attention is at the start of the Acts of the Apostles, when the disciples ask Jesus about the restoration of the... Read more
It’s an iconic song and arguably one of the most recognizable there is. It is hard to even know what genre to place it in. Yet I never thought about its theology until prompted to do so by a couple of things about the song coming to my attention in close succession, all responding to a video about the making of the song and how it came to be. As this article in Open Culture explains: Byrne developed [the lyrics] as... Read more
Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy – Vol. 4 (2021) – Call for Papers The Day that Coronavirus Stopped the World: What Do We Learn About Pandemics in Science Fiction Stories? We can’t say we weren’t warned. For decades now science fiction authors have been playing around with an enormous variety of pandemic scenarios. While some stories focus on attempts to avert them, many explore their catastrophic consequences, or the plight of victims and survivors in-between, and the ways in... Read more
I love the way the internet makes interesting and genuinely useful connections between things that lead to discoveries we might not have made without this AI assistance. One example from my recent experience is having YouTube introduce me to the Symphony No.1 by Eric DeLamarter. This was recommended to me by YouTube as a new upload to a YouTube channel that I subscribe to because it consistently offers music that I like, introducing me to new music by neglected composers of... Read more
I’ve been thinking a lot about John the Baptist lately (for reasons that are probably obvious to most who know my current research projects). The British Library’s Medieval Manuscripts blog offered an illustrated tutorial on how to be a hermit. They started off with Elijah and then John as one who patterned himself after Elijah. I think that connection is instructive. I don’t envisage Elijah as a recluse. He withdrew when his life was sought by authorities hostile to him. But... Read more
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