I can rarely pass up an opportunity to mention something about the intersection of religion and science fiction. And so here’s a clip that Hemant Mehta shared today (in a post that actually mentions some discussion of Star Trek and the Bible): From what little we learn about it in various episodes, Klingon religion is somewhat more complex than Worf’s remark in this clip suggests. And it isn’t clear that the Klingons fared better than the Bajorans as a result... Read more

Today Butler University hosts the 23rd annual Undergraduate Research Conference. Some 800 undergrads from more than 30 colleges and universities in the Midwest are on campus today to present on research that they have been doing. It’s a great event! Read more

Jokes for polyglots #129: American officials investigating what they believed were Israeli branches of organized crime syndicates remain perplexed by the fact that they seem to only sell perfectly legal baked goods. Jokes for church history geeks #237: A famous Mexican singer is being accused by church authorities of promoting Arianism. Read more

Via Sean the Baptist, news of a New Testament position in Australia: Lecturer in New Testament (continuous) Murdoch University is one of Australia’s leading universities with a strong focus on high quality teaching, research and scholarship. It is a young, growing university with a current enrolment of around 18,000 students. The School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Murdoch University (0.4) in conjunction with the Anglican Diocese of Perth (0.6) is looking to appoint a Lecturer (Level B) in New... Read more

Via Holger Zellentin on the Hugoye list-serv, news about two PhD Studentships in Jewish Studies at the University of Nottingham: For these competitive scholarships, we encourage applications from all areas of Jewish Studies, especially in Late Antique Judaism and in Jewish Philosophy.Please direct academic enquiries to Professor Agata Bielik-Robson ([email protected]) or to Dr. Holger Zellentin ([email protected])More information about the studentships can be found here:http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/theology/prospective/postgraduate/fees-funding/studentships.aspxThe prerequisite of securing an offer to study at the department can be obtained by applying here:https://my.nottingham.ac.uk/pgapps/welcome/All... Read more

The news that the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary has been completed, and all its volumes are free online, has been shared by Charles Halton, Duane Smith, H. H. Hardy, and AWOL. Read more

Last night PBS aired a documentary about the impact of the anti-Semitic forgery known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Islamic world today. I was struck by the similarities between this case and the varieties of pseudoscientific creationism that not only continue to circulate in many conservative Christian circles today, but have spread to Jewish and Islamic contexts as well. All that one has to do sometimes is come up with a story that people will want... Read more

Of the making of hype there is no end.                                                   — Solomon OK, so I made up that quote, loosely based on something that someone said, perhaps pretending to be Solomon at the time, and more likely the final editor of the book in question, and thus pretending to be someone pretending to be Solomon. But that... Read more

Not content merely to offer linguistic and script analysis to help debunk the lead plates, Steve Caruso has made another contribution to the biblioblogosphere. Only time will tell which will be the more significant. I am referring to the announcement that he is making the beta version of the Biblioblog Reference Library available on his web site. What, you may be wondering, is the Biblioblog Reference Library? It is the feeds of some 270 biblioblogs, gathered together in one place, searchable,... Read more

The book my students are currently reading in my freshman seminar course is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Today we talked about a number of topics, ranging from science fiction as social commentary to theocracy to the use of the Bible to justify social structures. Around the blogosphere recently, there have been a number of posts that relate to the Bible, fundamentalism, gender, society, and other topics that intersect with (and in) the novel. John Blake at CNN talks about how... Read more