Here I am returning to a session that I didn’t manage to blog about at AAR/SBL in November. The Enoch Seminar meets before as well as during the conference, and this year had a session dedicated to Adele Reinhartz’s book Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John. She is critical of the Lou Martyn hypothesis, suggesting that scholars have been inculturated into seeing John that way. Adopting a literary approach, she envisages how an ancient reader might... Read more
Two calls for papers from the Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible program unit, for the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in November: “Historical Women Interpreting Scripture through Music and the Arts.” We seek papers on the following topics 1)“Historical Women Interpreting Scripture through Music and the Arts.” Through the ages, countless women interpreted scripture through their creation of hymns, poetry, literature, painting, textiles, and other artistic works. We invite papers on historical women (active prior to World War I)... Read more
7th Annual International Conference of the Centre for Phenomenology in South Africa 1st CFP: Philosophy and Eschatology, Or: thinking of/from the end of the world 11-12 September 2020 University of Johannesburg, South Africa Organized by Paul Slama, Carien Smith, Justin Sands, Rafael Winkler, and Abraham Olivier Theme: Eschatology, the narrative of the end of time or the world, is an integral aspect of various intellectual traditions. From the Western theological tradition to Afro-pessimism, it also underlies the modern idea of progress and... Read more
It is high time for me to invite readers of my blog to my church, Crooked Creek Baptist Church, once again, as I have done occasionally in the past. Lately in my Sunday School class, we’ve been studying the First Epistle of John, although as always we veer off from there into interesting themes, connections, and side interests. Not surprising, when the text uses words like “antichrist.” But among my favorite recent discussions was one about unity and diversity in... Read more
I am extremely grateful to Kurk Gayle for taking the time to transcribe the podcast that I recorded with Ruth Hayhoe about her sister Suzanne McCarthy’s amazing book, As I say in the podcast, as transcripted, the book really does draw attention to something that is really pernicious and can really have a detrimental effect on anything from the self-esteem and self-understanding of women who are involved in Christian communities and are reading the Bible, to how churches engage with... Read more
Continuing my recap of the Digital Humanities session I chaired in November. Let me begin with links to three updates on Claire Clivaz’s Mark 16 project (highlighted in my first post from this session). The most pressing is probably the one with news and upcoming events. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and Hayim Lapin of the University of Maryland – College Park presented on “Automatic Transcriptions of Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts and Crowdsourcing Their Corrections.” They... Read more
The Doctor Who episode “The Haunting of Villa Diodati” takes place near Lake Geneva in June of 1816. Those familiar with history and literature will recognize the occasion even before the key characters are introduced, such as Lord Byron and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. That year came to be referred to as a year without a summer, with dreadful weather and gloom blamed on volcanic eruption. Byron comments in the episode, “The very world itself seems sick.” As so often, Doctor Who will... Read more
This post will be the first of two about the Digital Humanities session I presided over at AAR/SBL in San Diego. I thought of a possible connection with mythicism as I was listening to one of the papers, and so I will work that in as well. What does mythicism have to do with the Digital Humanities? I’ll explain that in a second post about this session. And before doing anything else, I will apologize that I took so long... Read more
I am supervising an honors thesis on the subject of Mandaean views of music past and present. It is a really interesting area that has been largely neglected, and this student who is majoring in Religion, Music, and International Studies is probably ideally poised to contribute to our understanding of this topic. As many readers of this blog know, I recently had the opportunity to visit Australia for the first time, and on that trip the Mubaraki family kindly welcomed... Read more
Since it had vanished from the internet in its older location, I wanted to share once again a Valentine poem in Mandaic that I submitted back in 2011 to the Eisenbrauns Valentine competition. It won first place! That annual tradition was so much fun, and it is too bad it is no longer continuing. Here’s a translation of the poem: In truth you are a beautiful woman You have no need of a love charm Set your heart upon... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In