My colleague Paul Valliere (now retired) used to teach a course on the Psalms, focused on the words for the most part. If you add music into the mix as part of the history of interpretation of those words, the amount of material to be covered multiplies. In my course on the Bible and music, I have the rest of the Bible in the mix as well. And so I never feel that I do justice to any of it,... Read more
Ancient aliens is pseudoscience and science fiction. Ancient robots is something else. Adrienne Mayor writes about her recent book Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology: Who first imagined robots? Most historians believe that automatons were first developed in the Middle Ages. Some philosophers of science claim that it was impossible for anyone in ancient times to imagine technologies beyond what already existed. Other scholars assume that all animated beings in mythology were inert matter brought to... Read more
While it often happens even under normal circumstances, at the moment it is difficult to Google anything related to “Doctor Who” the television show and get results on that subject. Instead, the results are about the “doctor who” did this or that, some sacrificing their lives as they took care of patients suffering from the effects of Covid-19. You should read those articles. But if you’re interested in the television series as well, then what? There is perhaps no better... Read more
Yale University seeks to appoint a Postdoctoral Associate in ancient and pre-modern cultures and civilizations. This is a two-year position beginning in the academic year 2020-2021 and attached to Archaia: the Yale Program for the Study of Ancient and Premodern Cultures and Societies. Now in its eighth year, Archaia is a collaborative forum that brings together scholars and graduate students working on early and pre-modern cultures and civilizations at Yale in the Humanities and Social Sciences in addition to the... Read more
I prefer to gamify my approach to grading for a number of reasons. The main one is to give students the freedom to try things, fail, and try again and still have it count as success. Often those who succeed most quickly and easily were either lucky, or had some advantage others did not. If what we value is not just what students bring with them already at the start of a class, but what they achieve during a semester... Read more
On International Women’s Day, my wife encouraged me to share at least one excerpt from the book that I am working on, What Jesus Learned From Women. I tried making several memes, with several different quotes from the drafts of chapters. One of them I shared on social media. All of them are included here, as a glimpse of some of the things I’ll say. Clearly I’m not paying enough attention to making sure that I say things that are brief,... Read more
Coronavirus. Covid-19. SARS. Pandemic. Many people are troubled by events that are unprecedented in their lifetime, with unfamiliar names and obscure terminology just making things more puzzling. Some will naturally turn to the Bible looking for answers, as well as comfort and guidance. ”What does the Bible say about Coronavirus?” is a question that is trending on Google. A number of websites claim to provide answers to this question. As a biblical scholar I am dismayed by much of what... Read more
A chemical study has determined the place of origin of the so-called “Nazareth Inscription.” Although in theory it is possible that the marble came from Cyprus and was used for an inscription in Nazareth, it is more likely that this artifact never actually had anything to do with Jesus. Plundering, robbing, desecrating, reusing, and doing other things to tombs was a wider issue completely apart from Jesus. It is probably an authentic edict from Caesar, but originally had nothing to... Read more
In a blog post about the discovery that all the supposed Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible are fakes, Steve Wiggins wrote: Biblical scholars often get accused of taking the life out of things.  Would it be better to believe in something that is exposed as a fake?  Not exactly debunkers, scholars are those who ask pointed questions of unstated assumptions.  If some antiquities dealer claims to have access to material kept out of official hands, and is willing to charge... Read more
International Conference “#DHJewish – Jewish Studies in the Digital Age”, Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), University of Luxembourg, 12-13 January 2021. In all humanities disciplines, scholars find themselves confronted with the rapidly increasing availability of digital resources (data), new technologies to interrogate and analyze them (tools), and the question of how to engage with these developments. The field of Jewish Studies is no exception. Even if applications of computing in the humanities go back at least 60 years, the... Read more
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