Neil Godfrey posted on this topic over at Vridar, and it seems that the post may go some way towards explaining the puzzling tension between his affirmations of mainstream historical scholarship on the one hand, and his positive view of mythicism on the other. Godfrey writes: But what if historians (whose careers are in history faculties that have nothing to do with biblical studies) who write about the Roman empire mention Jesus as the founder of the Christian religion. Do... Read more
To the biblioblogging community, As I will be hosting the Biblical Studies Carnival at the start of next month with its round-up of posts from this month, you might be expecting me to remind you of this fact and ask you to submit posts. That is not why I am writing. I am writing to let you know that, due to your impressive efforts this month, I have more than enough material for a Biblical Studies Carnival already. I thus... Read more
The possibility of a comparison between Jesus and Adam in Philippians 2:6-11 has been one of the major talking points in discussions of Pauline Christology over the past three decades. Since at least one major proponent of mythicism somehow managed to miss this entirely while allegedly doing research into early Christianity, I am sharing links to some of the many previews of works by Dunn or other participants in the discussion which can be found on Google Books, for the... Read more
If you hang around this blog a lot, you might not realize that discussion of sci-fi on biblioblogs is not universal, although it is not exactly uncommon either. Today, Scot McKnight shared a link to and excerpt from an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education on what led a programmer of robots to switch tracks and study philosophy. Julie Clawson blogged about speculative fiction, other prophetic literature, and the church. IO9 mentioned the development of technology to integrate circuitry... Read more
A colleague of mine in biology shared this video, which brings together all the Miss USA contestants’ answers to the question “Should evolution be taught in schools.” The contestant from my own state of Indiana, Jillian Wunderlich, speaks at the 4:25 mark. Although on the one hand I am dismayed by her lack of knowledge on the subject, in some ways her admission of ignorance and deferral of the decision to others is better than what many of the contestants... Read more
For many of us, return to teaching or studying has just happened, is in the process of happening, or is about to happen. And so I thought I would create an open thread on that topic. Are you teaching/studying? What are you looking forward to, or apprehensive about, in the coming semester or academic year? What are you doing that’s new or interesting? I’ll be teaching my first year seminar course on faith, doubt and reason, my course on the... Read more
As a result of recent discussions of mythicism, I thought it might be interesting and useful to post a question about the very nature of history. What makes a person or event “historical”? At the moment, I am inclined to think that it is, when it comes down to it, really nothing other than the collective judgment of historians that the evidence makes the existence of that person or event probable. Is there any other way to define what is... Read more
Mad scientists “playing God” are a staple of science fiction, ever since the first work of science fiction, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and right up to our favorite mad scientist of the current day, Walter Bishop from Fringe. But science fiction has often had an ambivalence about pioneers at the cutting edge – or fringe – of science. Is pressing ahead into new scientific domains “playing God” – and even if it is, is it necessarily a bad thing? Religion and... Read more
From Calm Blue Oceans HT Marc Cortez Read more
Remember the scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture where Spock gives Kirk a copy of Religion and Science Fiction for his birthday? Neither do I. But if he had given him Religion and Science Fiction instead of A Tale of Two Cities, then it is just possible that the chapter on good and evil in Star Trek and The Prisoner might have helped him deal with some of the baggage he was carrying around with him. Being split into... Read more
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