I am at long last reaching the end of this extended recap of the day workshop on the future of gen ed, arriving at the final Q&A. These are much more diffuse and scattered than what I offered in previous posts, since here there were diverse questions and my own mind was pulling together the threads from the whole experience. It was fascinating to hear how each constituency on some campuses insists that they know what is needed: Engineering students... Read more
Jesus obeys, therefore God highly exalted him. This is what Paul says in Philippians 2:6-11. How does this relate to his frequent assertions that God accepts human beings on the basis of grace and not works? Does it lend support to the interpretation that Paul’s focus is not in fact good works or obedience as Luther thought, but “works of the Law” in the sense of the specific requirements that separate Jews from Gentiles, such as circumcision, kosher food laws,... Read more
I’ll be presenting on the subject of Open Educational Resources (OERs for short) at Butler University this Thursday, together with one of our librarians, Jennifer Coronado. She has not only been an active supporter of OERs and open access scholarship in general, including in conjunction with the PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) Affordable Education Initiative, but also convened a Faculty-Staff Learning Community this academic year to explore this topic. I was eager to participate in general, but also... Read more
The episode “Ascension of the Cybermen” would have grabbed me even if it had not used religious terminology, but that aspect makes it all the more interesting to someone like me. The language of ascension is of course closely associated with the depiction in the Acts of the Apostles of Jesus literally going up into the sky, and of the Gospel of John’s language of the Son of Man who goes or has gone up into heaven. But there is... Read more
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
Select your answer to see how you score.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In