Here’s my son making his first solo French horn performance, accompanied by me on the piano. The piece is “Hail the Conquering Hero” from Judas Maccabaeus by Georg Friedrich Händel, in the arrangement by Arthur Frackenpohl. The melody is probably more familiar to some as the tune from the hymn “Thine Be The Glory” (among English speakers; in Germany the melody is associated with a Christmas song). Read more
As Neil Godfrey helpfully drew attention to in a comment, there seems to be no agreement among Jesus-mythicists about when the earliest Christian sources were written, which sources are the earliest, or which ones are authentic. This ought to raise suspicion that mythicism is a preordained conviction in search of any arguments that can be used to try to promote it, rather than a conclusion. And so I thought it would be interesting to ask whether mythicism is falsifiable. Obviously... Read more
It is really striking just how many of the Super Bowl commercials this year have had a sci-fi focus – and one fits the category of fantasy, featuring vampires. Which was your favorite? The Star Wars one has a pretty good twist, I thought, but the Chevy post-2012-apocalypse is my favorite of the ones I have seen. But perhaps more importantly, is this definitive proof that geekdom is now cool – and profitable? Here are videos of some of the... Read more
The news is circulating from a blog post by Dan Wallace (picked up by Joel Watts and Brian LePort) that a manuscript of the Gospel of Mark has been found which has been dated on paleographical grounds to the first century. [The photo included in this post is not a photo of the manuscript in question. As far as I am aware, no photo has yet been released]. The first thing to be said is that this news is like any... Read more
Today in my Sunday school class we reached Romans 14, which famously discusses the relationship between the “weak” and the “strong” in the church in Rome. We began by noting that everyone who reads this passage inevitably assumes that they are the strong and others are the weak. So we considered the text in its original context first, and asked who the “weak” seem to have been, given the clues in the passage. They were those who were concerned with... Read more
From Rubes HT David Evarts on Facebook Read more
“Recently one theologian who teaches an undergraduate historical Jesus class recommended to me two works on historiographical methods. When I quoted back to him key sections that contradicted the most fundamental processes of historical Jesus scholars he was enraged. I was misrepresenting them. It turned out that he was the one who had simply failed to grasp the clear, black and white points that these texts made about the need for establishing provenance and external controls — and that as... Read more
In the episode “The Underwater Menace,” the Doctor, Ben, Polly, and Jamie arrive in the lost underwater city of Atlantis. The situation they find their combines the worst of both religion and science. Soon after arriving, the travelers are nearly sacrificed to the “living goddess Ando” who is depicted as part human, part fish. They are rescued when the Doctor sends a note (which he signs “Dr. W”!!!) to a professor he has figured out is there, Professor Zaroff, saying... Read more
Allan Bevere chose my caption as the winner of his latest caption contest. Here’s the photo with my caption: “If I speak in the tongues of penguins and of polar bears, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” Read more
This second episode of the Patrick Troughton era, “The Highlanders” witnessed the arrival of a companion who would be with the Second Doctor throughout the rest of his stint: Jamie McCrimmon. This episode also witnessed something that William Hartnell had done, but which Patrick Troughton did much more comically: impersonations and disguises. The episode featured strong female characters, eschewing the tendency of much science fiction (from which Doctor Who itself has not been immune) to have female characters provide shrieking... Read more
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