My Facebook connections are diverse enough that I see a range of viewpoints, which is a good thing that I am determined to maintain. It also means that I see a lot that disturbs and disheartens me. One recent example involved a denialist piece misrepresenting peer review and defending anti-vaccination, anti-GMO, and other such stances. Among the things I wrote in comments there: The entire academic endeavor involves some minimal peer review of the sort the web page you shared... Read more
I’ve explored the possibility of making a historical Jesus role playing game before. But what about a Jesus “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel? This came up in a conversation about what might have happened if Jesus had not died by crucifixion – whether because he lived to old age in his own time, or was “disappeared” in the U.S.S.R. during the Communist era, or was assassinated in the U.S. today. That led to a raising of the possibility of a... Read more
10th Congress of the Société d’Etudes Samaritaines Call for Papers Dear colleagues, This is to announce the 10th Congress of the Société d’EtudesSamaritaines, which will take place at the Károli Gáspár University in Budapest (Hungary), 19th-24th July 2020. The congress will be jointly organized by the SÉS and the Faculty of Theology of the Károli Gáspár University of the Hungarian Reformed Church. The Congress of the SÉS meets every four years and is the mostimportant meeting of experts working in the... Read more
2020 Dirk Smilde Scholarships The Qumran Institute of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen is happy to announce the call for 2020 Dirk Smilde Scholarships for excellent PhD students/candidates and postdocs in Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, Dead Sea Scrolls, and related fields. 2 scholarships will be offered for a duration of 3 months each, to be in residence October through December, 2020. The scholarship amounts to €1,000 per month. The scholarships will coincide... Read more
Today I will be leaving to make a fairly brief visit to Australia. It will be my first time there. The main purpose of the trip is to accompany a group of students on the first leg of a semester-long study abroad program that Butler University runs called GALA, short for Global Adventures in the Liberal Arts. While I was willing to help the university and take the place of a professor who had previously been slated to fill this... Read more
There have been a lot of discussion on blogs and elsewhere online about the possibility that U. S. president Donald Trump might be the antichrist. Ironically, and at the same time both disappointingly and rather refreshingly, this discussion hasn’t been among those who’ve been predicting the imminent arrival of the antichrist ever since Darby came up with and successfully promote his Rapture theology in the 19th century. Those very people are the ones who are following a world leader uncritically... Read more
In this episode of the ReligionProf Podcast I talk with Dr. Sara Parks about her important new book, Gender in the Rhetoric of Jesus: Women in Q. As we discuss in the podcast, you don’t need to accept the existence of the hypothetical Q source to find this book useful, as it is about the historical Jesus. I do nonetheless think that Q skeptics who read it will get a better sense of what kinds of phenomena emerge from the... Read more
I want to share some thoughts inspired by a recent Sunday school class of mine in which the beloved conservative question came up again: “But what if you’re wrong?” We had reached 1 John 2:2 some weeks earlier, and the reference to Jesus being an atoning sacrifice not only for our sins, but those of the entire world, led a retired minister to bring up the topic of universalism. I was quick to emphasize that there is such a thing... Read more
I decided to wait until the second part aired before blogging about this episode, since the first part ended with a cliffhanger and a major reveal that had fans excited. As the title suggests, the episode is having fun parodying the spy thriller genre in general and the James Bond franchise in particular. In the story, aliens have been attacking and rewriting the DNA of spies around the world. As the Doctor and companions work with MI-6 to investigate, they... Read more
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How Times Have Changed
It is easy to forget that not that long ago, religious and political stances aligned themselves very differently. As a case in point, Jim Burklo looks at William Jennings Bryan, most famous for his role in the (in)famous Scopes Trial. Here is a lengthy excerpt from an even longer piece that is just fascinating: Imagine Bernie Sanders’ public policy prescriptions woven into a fundamentalist Christian religious tract. Does that idea hurt your head? Well, it’s not a new one. Let’s... Read more