Dan McClellan has been blogging through James Dunn’s recent book on early Christian worship, monotheism and Christology. His latest post is about chapter 3. Read more

I learned from Jim Davila the sad news that Alan Segal, the famous scholar of ancient Judaism and Christianity, has died rather suddenly and unexpectedly. In appreciation of his life and work, here are a few of his books which are available for preview on Google Books: Read more

This weekend the meeting of the Midwest chapter of the Society of Biblical Literature, American Oriental Society and American Schools of Oriental Research took place. There were travel delays that prevented me from making it to Friday evening’s session, but Saturday was full of lots of interesting papers and conversations. It was great to see fellow bloggers Pete Bekins and Michael Halcomb. The latter’s was one of several interesting papers in the Gospels section, and the only one to be... Read more

Butler University is going to be rolling out a new unified messaging system, which will allow employees and students to receive voice mail via their e-mail as well as check e-mail via their phone. One of the early adopters during the pilot phase was using the latter feature, checking e-mail by phone. The text is converted to speech by the computer and read aloud to you. This colleague had received an e-mail from a colleague named Jesus (Spanish pronunciation). The... Read more

I’ll start with a reminder about Evolution Weekend (this weekend!) and Darwin Day. And then here are some links appropriate to the occasion. Bill Nye (yes, the science guy) talks about the importance of evolution in science education. Jennifer Oldham looks at the evolution of teaching evolution. Michael Zimmerman talks about what has changed since the first evolution weekend. Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman asks if rational religious people are all that rare. Read more

Neil Godfrey has a “response” to a recent post of mine on mythicism. He equates what seem to me to be distinct scenarios. On the one hand, we have something that is well-documented and much-studied, the drawing on literary prototypes in storytelling. This is what Allison’s study (which Godfrey cites) highlights in Matthew’s Gospel, taking the already-existing figure of Jesus, and traditions about his teachings, and drawing on earlier stories about Moses to highlight similarities and differences between the two.... Read more

 Pithless Thoughts shared these contrasting images in a post that deserves to be widely seen and circulated:  The Martyrs of Old  The “Martyrs” of Modern-Day America   Read more

Eisenbrauns is having its annual Valentine’s Day competition. I had meant to try to put together some sort of Mandaic Valentine’s Day poem, and allowed it to slip my mind, so that I probably won’t manage to get an entry in this year. But for others who have knowledge of Ancient Near Eastern languages or ancient Greek, there is still time to submit entries to the Eisenbrauns 2011 Valentine’s Day contest. Read more

In a “response” to a recent post of mine about mythicism, Neil Godfrey illustrates well the very problem and double-standard that my post was intended to highlight. The post begins by stating and commenting on the principle which was the focus of my post: “If all we have is a story that has no corroboration external to the narrative itself to attest to its historical status, then at the most basic level we have no way of knowing if the... Read more

I cannot hope to fill the role of Scott Bailey while he is taking a blog hiatus. Scott does a wonderful job of highlighting issues in Christian music and does so in a humorous and entertaining way, and the blogosphere is far less fun when he is not around.  Nevertheless, having participated recently in a meme about problematic Contemporary Christian Music songs, and having included praise and worship songs in that category, I thought of another one that has one line that bugs... Read more