In today’s class, we discussed how awareness of an earlier tradition of telling versions of the same story – as in the case of the Genesis flood story, paralleled in ancient Mesopotamian literature in the Atrahasis and Gilgamesh epics – can be important for understanding the later version of the story in question. Read more
I have mentioned before that Revelation 17:9-10 seems to me to provide decisive evidence against the futurist or “end times” approach to understanding the Book of Revelation. We got up to chapter 17 of the Book of Revelation in my Sunday school class yesterday, and so we focused attention on that particular set of verses – but also others. Babylon the harlot is explicitly said to represent the city of Rome (17:18), and the beast here comes to denote not... Read more
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This Strange Brew comic featuring Gandalf as a professor saying “You Shall Not Pass” seems worth sharing as the end of the semester draws quickly near. Read more
I’ve been wanting to blog about Fringe this season, but the relative paucity of explicit God-talk meant that I often didn’t have a clear topic to focus on in posts. But even the new intro is worth focusing attention on. In place of the paranormal fringe science or pseudoscience of the previous seasons, it substitutes things like independent thought, education, freedom, and due process. Such ideas were once fringe notions too. And so the very opening credits sequence is asking... Read more
Liberty Counsel and the American Family Association have posted their Tenth Annual “Naughty and Nice” list, encouraging Christians to shop at stores that wish them a Merry Christmas rather than a mere “Happy Holidays.” Am I the only one who remembers a time, not so long ago, when Christians thought that their goal should be to being the Christian message to those who needed to hear it, and not merely to surround themselves with other Christians to exchange Christian greetings with one... Read more
As Thanksgiving has passed, we have reached the time of year for holiday music – including but not limited to Christian music. And so let me herald the arrival of that season with a classic: “Vader Did You Know?” Read more
An article in the New York Times today compared the recent joint annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature to the Mos Eisley Cantina. And that is a moment at the intersection of religion and science fiction that I couldn’t allow to pass unmentioned! Brian Le Port offered these two photos for comparison… The article is actually about the activism of society members in relation to the Hyatt workers’ struggle. Read more
I thought the video below was a clever challenge to the notion of God as an oversized Santa. I’d say, from my own perspective, that it doesn’t go far enough in moving away from anthropomorphism altogether. But it may be helpful in getting those whose idea of God is one particularly crass form of big man in the sky to reflect and perhaps even begin to reconsider their approach. It also seems to offer a different approach to the gospel... Read more
John Dominic Crossan’s presidential address at SBL was incredibly interesting, and made fantastic use of technology to explore key elements in Eastern iconography depicting the resurrection – and that is what it is consistently referred to in ancient times, “the resurrection” (ἡ ἀνάστασις) and not “the resurrection of Christ.” The event is consistently corporate rather than individual as in Western depictions. As you will notice in the example below, there are a number of elements which a comparison shows are... Read more
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