I made the above poster after a game of Words With Friends that I was playing ended today. It was originally going to be just a blog post, with the text below, but I thought that a poster made the point better. Now more than ever you are likely to encounter a dacoit wearing a jubhah, who is chewing qat or perhaps eating za with ingredients that won't imbalance their qi. That isn't the “Words With Friends Effect.” The “Words... Read more
A few days ago I had the privilege of listening to a lunchtime talk with snippets of performance by my colleague Kate Boyd, who worked on and performed John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano during her recent sabbatical. John Cage, I learned, had his thinking about the purpose of music transformed by a phrase he encountered both from a living Indian composer and from a 16th century English writer, both of whom said that the purpose of music... Read more
I am grateful to Patheos for the privilege of viewing a screening of the new movie Hellbound? before its official opening. This movie is a powerful exploration of the doctrine of hell from a Christian perspective that does one basic thing that all Christians ought to do, namely not simply assume that the view which is articulated most bluntly by Westboro Baptist Church is the right one. The movie in fact begins with conversations with members of Westboro Baptist Church – seen holding... Read more
Rick Perry has apparently made some bizarrely critical comments about the separation of church and state. That separation is the separation that the forerunners of modern Evangelicals, including the Baptists in particular, struggled for and advocated. It is the one that is surely responsible for the fact that religion is a vibrant part of American life in a way that is not true in those countries where such a separation does not exist. If Perry is calling for spiritual warfare... Read more
From the Bizarro comic series By Dan Piraro Read more
Today a wonderful opportunity to continue illustrating more features of BibleWorks 9 has presented itself. With the issuing of Francis Watson’s pdf arguing that the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” is a fake, the seemingly unparalleled line 6 stands out amid other lines for which Watson claims to have found possible sources of derivation, even if some of those are themselves rather loose. Watson suggested “The passage might conceivably echo Papias’s unpleasant description of Judas Iscariot’s grossly swollen body.” In response, Richard... Read more
Steve Douglas kindly made and shared this image: The words are something I said in my previous blog post, in response to Francis Watson’s claim that various phrases show dependence on other Gospels. There are a great many phrases one will encounter in a language which will only seem derivative of a specific other text to someone who is not a native speaker – to a native speaker, they will more likely seem to be common language that it would... Read more
Let me start with the news that Mark Goodacre shared a pdf of an article written by Francis Watson, arguing that the recently-found Coptic papyrus that has been dubbed the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” is a fake. He followed that up with a second shorter pdf on the forger’s alleged technique. Some are already pronouncing the issue resolved. I would like to suggest that that judgment is premature. First, Watson emphasizes that the Gospel may be “fake” in more than... Read more
“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views…which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.” Uttered by the Fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker, in the episode “The Face of Evil.” Read more
As readers already know, a small fragment in Coptic that has been making headlines because it includes the words “Jesus said, ‘My wife…'” and then is cut off there. I suggested in my last post, but thought it might be worth separating out in a post of its own, that it would be interesting (and perhaps also fun) to bounce around ideas – both serious ones and silly ones – about how the text might have continued. If you were writing... Read more
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