For a long time, I’ve wanted to learn to play jazz. I had a friend in high school who would play things like “Ain’t No Need To Worry” by the Winans with cool jazzy chord progressions, and a piano/organ player at a church I attended in the UK who would add jazzy interludes in songs. I copied things that I saw both of them do, but always wanted to learn the ropes of jazz piano in a way that I couldn’t... Read more

The blog Masters of Theology has put together a list of top blogs by “theology professors” (covering those who teach Biblical studies, theology, philosophy, church history, and other such subjects). They are listed by category rather than some other ranking system, and Exploring Our Matrix gets a mention. I’m usually wary of such lists, which lately have become a means simply of promoting sites and getting others to link back to you. But this list seems to be a genuinely useful one, including both... Read more

Searching (as I always seem to as Christmas draws near) to see if any new recordings or videos or the Christmas carol “Every Star Shall Sing A Carol” by Sydney Carter have become available, this year I was struck that the keywords of that title brought up as a suggested alternative “Every Star, Every Planet” – theme music from season 5 of the latest Doctor Who series. And it features as an alternative title an “I am” saying: “I Am... Read more

HT William Black Read more

Consider this today’s “quote of the day.” It is from Daniel Kirk, and comes from a post about a subject of great interest to me, namely the relationship between Jewish monotheism and early Christian Christology: Bauckham makes an interesting case for God’s exclusive sovereignty. But at the end he cites the Son of Man from the Parables of Enoch as someone other than God who exercises God’s sovereign rule over the earth. Bauckham calls this “the exception that proves the... Read more

Brian LePort shared some thoughts, and the video below featuring a talk illustrated with accompanying hand-drawn cartoons, focusing on how education has been done in the past and how to approach it in relation to the present context. The video is provocative and in places controversial, but it raises some important issues and provides a good conversation starter on an important subject. Read more

Via Pharyngula, an exploration of the topic of climate change (and why local weather is not an appropriate means to evaluating it) presented through the medium of comics. Here’s a sample: Read more

A retelling of the traditional nativity story updated to include today’s technology. Stephen Smuts, Jim West, John Byron and The Lead all shared this before I did. Read more

The title of this post is a joke, but the subject is serious. There is a lot of discussion going on about the new rules requiring those without PhDs to submit a complete copy of their paper and not merely an abstract when proposing a paper for the SBL Annual Meeting. How exactly are those on steering committees supposed to enforce this? Require a facsimile of the would-be presenter’s PhD diploma accompany the proposal? Check with the issuing university to... Read more

The new Facebook profile prominently features a place to list the languages you know. I never know what to write in such cases. Should I include only languages I can converse in completely fluently? Ones that I can read but not really speak – or speak but not really read? Ones that are rather rusty? Ones that I’m in the process of learning? The matter of degrees of literacy and fluency is familiar to those who study the ancient world... Read more