I’ve been spending some time this evening working on the Mandaean Book of John. In looking up a passage in the important but puzzling text known as Haran Gawaita (which can be found online here and here, and which I am embedding below), Ruha (i.e. the Holy Spirit) is referred to as the wife of Adonai, the Jewish God. Both are viewed negatively in Mandaeism. Given all the recent attention to and interest in Asherah, I thought it worth offering... Read more

Ben Witherington just posted the first post in what looks like it will be a series on his blog about Bart Ehrman’s most recent book, Forged. Since I posted my own review, other bloggers who have reviewed or blogged about the book include The Clever Badger, Otagosh, John Hobbins, and Eric Reitan. Nick Norelli has also posted a review, which ends with the rather strange idea that, in order to appreciate or care about honesty, you have to believe in... Read more

Jim West shared a reminder to send your submissions for this month’s Biblical Studies Carnival to Darrell Pursiful. Or perhaps this month we’ll have to call it the “Biblical and Lead Plates Studies Carnival.” Read more

Via Joel and Jim, I learned of the RSS feed for all biblioblogs! Read more

HT to Mark Goodacre on Facebook for letting us know that his book The Synoptic Problem: A Way through the Maze is available for free on the Internet Archive! Read more

Presumably spurred by BBC coverage of the topic (the BBC web site has particularly clear photos of the lead codices, but almost entirely without letters or text, and this is presumably intentional), the blogosphere has been buzzing with posts on this topic. Larry Hurtado says “Chill, dude.” (No, seriously, he does!)Andrew Perriman views this as an earlier thought experiment possibly become reality.Coptic News and Archive cites the Bedouin owner of the books, who claims they were in his family’s possession for more... Read more

Jim Linville has posted an announcement about an upcoming conference for students to be held at the University of Lethbridge. There is also an abstract of the keynote speaker’s presentation, which explains the reasons why people study, and ought to study, religion. Read more

Thanks to Nijay Gupta for pointing out that the latest issue (1.3) of the Journal of Early Christianity is available for free download, with articles by James D. G. Dunn, Sean Freyne, Samuel Byrskog and others. Read more

When we get up to the Acts of John in my “Heresy” class, I usually have us listen together to Gustav Holst’s “The Hymn of Jesus” op. 37, which is a choral setting of the hymn that Jesus teaches his disciples in the Acts of John. Below is one of the several recordings available on YouTube. I wish there was one that I could share with you that isn’t segmented into parts. This may work for some of you: Share... Read more

Episode 2 of the BBC series The Bible’s Buried Secrets, featuring Dr. Francesca Stavrakopolou of the University of Exeter, focuses on the polytheism of pre-exilic Israel, with attention to El and Ba’al as well as Asherah, the consort of El/Yahweh. As I watched it tonight, I often felt torn when it came to the rhetoric used – that the Israelites were once polytheists is not news to scholars, and even the title “Did God Have a Wife?” is not new.... Read more