Amazon Bestseller!

I must offer thanks to those who decided to pre-order The Only True God. I just looked and it was ranked as a bestseller, coming in at #53 on amazon.com in the category

Books > Religion & Spirituality > Judaism > History of Religion

Of course, I initially suspected that perhaps there were only 53 books in this category, but not so! :-)

What We Know

We are part of something greater than ourselves, something that may well be infinite.

It gave rise to us - "created" us, if you will, through the unfolding of various processes.

We cannot see it from the outside, cannot know if referring to it as "it" fits less well than using a personal pronoun. Does this reality that transcends and incorporates persons such as ourselves likewise transcend terms such as personal and impersonal?

We see in the wider universe what we see in ourselves.

Some look at the vast stretches of empty space and see evidence of meaninglessness. But if we look within we see empty space as well. If we stood on the edge of an atomic nucleus and looked out, the distance would overwhelm us, and perhaps persuade us then too that there is no interconnectedness, no greater structure, no meaning.

And yet that atom might be within a person, within you or me, and the lives we live which incorporate that atom we and others might indeed consider meaningful.

There are connections, but we do not always see them. Remember that the space between us is no greater than the space within us.

If we ask the question "Is there a God?", what answer should be given? If one means specific gods depicted in ancient texts interpreted literally, then of course such entities, seemingly part of this vast universe and less than it, are placed in serious doubt, although there are traditions going back deep into antiquity of taking such stories as symbols of the very sorts of transcendence we do encounter in reality.

But if we ask if there is something greater than ourselves, which encompasses us and gives rise to us, and which is a mystery we cannot fathom but which inspires in us awe and wonder...how could we possibly say "no"?

There are some things we claim to know with certainty when the evidence may not support it sufficiently to persuade others, or when it is something deeply personal rather than general. Yesterday as I drove to work, the sound of Vaughan Williams and the billowing clouds in the autumn sky moved me. But I cannot assume that they would move everyone in the same way. Why is it that we can disagree about such matters, and yet the very similar domain of religious beliefs, language and symbolism leads to heated conflict?

What would happen if all of us who share this sense of awe and wonder at our existence, and a value for life as rare, precarious and precious, focused on what unites us rather than on those things about which we disagree?

The Only True God: pre-order discount

You can pre-order The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context at a significant discount on amazon.com. I'm not sure what kind of offer University of Illinois Press has at SBL, but it is hard to beat 34% off the list price!

Review of Swearengen, Beyond Paradise

Review of Jack Clayton Swearengen, Beyond Paradise: Technology and the Kingdom of God (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2007). Review published in Teaching Theology and Religion 11:4 (2008) p.236.

Jack Clayton Swearengen’s book Beyond Paradise: Technology and the Kingdom of God is intended as a primer on the ethics of technology and engineering from a Christian perspective. Apart from its final chapters, which offer a naively simplistic presentation of “the biblical response” (p.271) to the book’s subject, this volume succeeds in usefully presenting information about a range of issues in ethics and technology, highlighting specific cases in detail. As such, it could provide a useful textbook for a course on technology, religion and ethics, provided it is supplemented with a more serious theological treatment.

The book is weakest when the author steps outside his area of expertise (engineering and policy) and attempts to address matters of ethics and utilize the Bible for this purpose. For Swearengen, the meaning of the Bible (and to a large extent its relevance to technology) is self-evident. That there are other interpretations than young-earth creationism (on p.273, the author uncritically buys into the idea that, until the fall, all animals were vegetarians) and premillenial dispensationalism (pp.277-279) is not something the author seems to even be aware of, much less discuss. When affirming the relevance of the Bible to engineering and technology, the author will make sweeping affirmations about there being “many passages” (p.122) and “many specific scriptures” (p.293) that address an issue, without citing any of them. On the whole, Swearengen’s approach attempts to provide facile answers to what are, even for Christians who look to the Bible for wisdom and insight, nevertheless complex problems and issues (p.306).

The author’s treatment of specific technological subjects is, on the other hand, very informative and interesting – not surprisingly, perhaps, since this is in fact his area of genuine expertise. The book provides a lot of information about such subjects as the environment and sustainability, automotive transportation and the national infrastructure that supports it, assessment of the relative costs of subsidizing freight by truck (with its impact on roads) vs. rail, the use of statistics in discussions of road safety, the popularity of SUVs, and the evolution of the suburbs. Where the author provides commentary on or evaluation of modern technology, he is often remarkably insightful. All of this would provide an excellent basis for classroom discussion of these pressing contemporary issues.

Even here, however, there are moments where there is an ironic contrast between the author’s statements about technology and the realities of the process of the book’s production. For instance, the author confidently utilizes Wikipedia and other web sites as sources of reliable information, rather than using them as a way to identify primary sources. There are also a number of typos, missing quotation marks and other errors that show the author’s reliance (as so typical of our age) on spell-checking technology rather than human proofreaders. And right from the outset, Swearengen quotes an author who asserts that she could have learned Mandarin in the time she has spent mastering various gadgets whose usefulness is quickly obsolete (p.x). But anyone who has learned Mandarin in recent years will know that doing so is far easier today than ever before not only because of advances in educational technique, but also because of the use and availability of relevant technology such as compact disks and computer software. In another instance, when discussing how one locale’s ban of private use of fireworks prohibited events that forged communal relations, Swearengen never notes that this is an example of the regulation of the use of technology and that it seems that, counter to the overall emphasis of his book, such regulation can potentially have the same negative side effects as the failure to regulate technology. Such instances as these provide teaching moments that can be used to illustrate how even those who advocate taking an appropriately critical approach to technology can nevertheless have blind spots regarding it.

The author helpfully brings matters related to teaching and education into the foreground (see e.g. pp.235-236), and this is a particularly positive feature of the book. He notes the differences in perspectives on technology from the Liberal Arts and from those working in the technical and engineering realms, as well as emphasizing the necessity of lifelong learning in connection with the pace of technological advancement as relates to employment, something our students ought to be concerned with (pp.19-20).

Swearengen helpfully highlights how many Evangelicals simply adopt an uncritical technological optimism, assuming that the Bible has nothing to say that relates to technology or the environment. Yet in the end, Swearengen’s book illustrates rather than addresses the general conservative Evangelical tendency to be technologically savvy but theologically unsophisticated.

North American Undergraduate Conference in Religion and Philosophy

Call For Papers: The North American Undergraduate Conference in Religion and Philosophy
Date: Friday-Saturday, March 27-28, 2009
Location: St. Francis University, Loretto, PA
Theme: “The Common Good”
Deadline: 150 word abstract, February 13, 2009; complete submission, March 13, 2009
Website: www.francis.edu/NAUCRP.htm


CALL FOR PAPERS
We cordially invite undergraduates to submit proposals on matters pertaining to philosophy and religion for the third annual North American Undergraduate Conference in Religion and Philosophy. Submissions are encouraged from students majoring in all academic fields to include (but not limited to), religion, philosophy, sociology, psychology, history, literature, the fine arts, and political science.

Although papers on all subjects will be considered, priority will be given to those addressing this year’s theme, “The Common Good.” The common good “refers to the sum total of all the social conditionals that allow people, both individuals and groups, to lead fully human lives. Among the essential dimensions of the common good are (1) respect for other people and their rights; (2) the development of the temporal and spiritual goods of society; and (3) justice, peace, and security for all people” (John T. Ford, Glossary of Theological Terms, 2006).

Paper proposals (roughly 250 words) should give a brief but concise outline of the presentation. The deadline for proposals is February 13, 2009. Please include your full name, paper title, institution, e-mail, phone number, and the name and contact information of your major professor. Presenters must submit their full paper by March 13, 2009 to be considered for conference prizes. Proposals and final papers should be sent via e-mail attachment to Dr. Arthur Remillard at aremillard@francis.edu.

This year’s keynote speaker will be peace activist, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and author John Dear, S.J. His most recent books include, A Persistent Peace: One Man's Struggle for a Nonviolent World and Transfiguration: A Meditation on Transforming Ourselves and Our World.

The keynote address will be given on Friday evening, with a student-led discussion forum to follow. All student presentations will be given on Saturday from approximately 9:00am to 5:00pm. This conference is open to the public and free for presenters and non-presenters alike. For more information, directions, contacts, scheduling, etc., please visit our website: www.francis.edu/NAUCRP.htm. This conference is organized by St. Francis University, PA and Westminster College, PA, with the support of SFU’s Campus Ministry, the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies, the School of Humanities, Behavioral Sciences, and Education, the Institute for Ethics, and the DiSepio Institute for Rural Health and Wellness.

An Irish Priest, an English Rabbi, a Welsh Imam and a Panda walk into a bar...

In a book chapter on oral tradition, I want to make reference in a section heading to some stereotypical set-up for a joke, where certain individuals who make regular appearances at this point in jokes walk into a bar.

Who should I use in this illustration? If this were merely for a British audience, then it would be an Englishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman, perhaps. But if one wants the allusion to be clear for a broader English-speaking audience, who are the best characters to use?

Oh, and in case you're wondering how an actual story featuring the individuals named in the post title would continue, here it is:

An Irish priest, an English rabbi, a Welsh imam and a panda walk into a bar.
The bartended looks up at them and asks, "What is this, some kind of joke?"

The Blue Parakeet

Scot McKnight's forthcoming book The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Zondervan, 2008) is spiritual dynamite. In the book, Scot treats the Bible with a combination of honesty and devotion that is remarkably powerful, and while some may find his approach troubling because it challenges their cherished assumptions, I anticipate and hope that many more will find his honesty refreshing. The justice he does to the Bible's diversity and development makes his approach appealing to those for whom being "Biblical" is important to their faith.

Scot's book is full of autobiographical details and anecdotes, beginning with the story of his coming to a personal faith. Soon after that, it seems, Scot saw more quickly than most of us that the claim being made by some Christians that they believe everything the Bible says and thus practice whatever the Bible says is (to use his term) "hogwash".

When some encounter this discrepancy between what so-called "Bible-believing Christians" claim and the reality, they may have a crisis of faith. Scot, however, saw something else, something that eventually led to the writing of this powerful book. He saw in the discrepancy between some things that are in the Bible and what we believe and do today something appropriate, something that in fact emulated a Biblical model, although in many instances the underlying rationale was merely implicit and unarticulated.

This doesn't mean that all discrepancies between what we find in the Bible and what we believe and do are good. But throughout the Bible we encounter dialogue and the practice of discernment, as one author, community or generation interacts with another, and does not always reach the same conclusion. This is appropriate, Scot argues, because God speaks to each generation in a unique way. To quote the book, "it is impossible to live a first-century life in a twenty-first century world." And so the approach to the Bible that acknowledges that "that was then, this is now" is not merely a convenient cop-out but acknowledgement of a "bedrock reality."

Making sense of the underlying rationale for how we discern what is of ongoing relevance in the Bible and what is not, and how this leads different Christians and communities to diverse conclusions and practices even as was the case and we see expressed in the Bible's own diverse witness itself, became a lifelong quest for Scot. All readers of the book will be grateful for what Scot shares, as it is deeply personal, profoundly insightful, authentically Christian and ultimately Biblical.

It is another personal anecdote that explains the book's title, the story of a blue parakeet, someone's escaped pet, that came and made its home for a while in Scot's yard. The initial reaction of other birds was fear, but then this newcomer was embraced in ways that changed the dynamics of "birddom" in his yard. The passages in the Bible that do not fit with our preconceived notions are like blue parakeets. If we do not ignore them, silence them or drive them away, they can change us in powerful and important ways.

Scot surveys a number of common "shortcuts" that people take with the Bible, which he considers inadequate. These include the approach that thinks we simply need to retrieve information from the Bible and bring it directly into our time as is; the approach that treats as most important the "puzzle", the theological system, that one puts together using the pieces provided by or hidden in the Bible; the approach that treats the Bible as a Rohrshach inkblot; and a number of others. Emphasizing that we have not been given a theological system in the Bible but story, Scot goes on to consider the individual Biblical authors' contributions as "wiki-stories" of the one underlying story. This meta-story which he discerns (perhaps in a way that not all would find persuasive) begins with creation and fall, the fragmentation of our original unity, and the move to restore the broken image of God.

Scot speaks in a way that addresses powerfully the failure of "Bible-believing Christians" to really come to grips with what is going on in the Bible, which often leads them to deny that they are "picking and choosing" because they are persuaded they should not do so. But Scot shows for instance how the early Church discerned that circumcision, which was an absolutely clear-cut commandment required not merely of biological descendants of Abraham but anyone incorporated into his family (Genesis 17:9-14), need not be imposed on Gentile Christians. The early Church, in other words, discerned that something in God's Word ought to be set aside.

The latter part of Scot's book if focused on using the issue of women in ministry as a concrete example of his approach, worked out in greater detail. After looking at WDWD (What Did Women Do?) in the Bible, and considering examples of women as leaders in ancient Israel, Scot acknowledges that one could easily argue "that was then, this is now", a principle that potentially can cut both ways. And so attention is given to the trajectory of the underlying story he has discerned, which aims at restoring original unity. Also brought into the discussion is the way Paul treated matters of dress, gender roles, and the like in pragmatic terms, asking what the affect would be on the reputation of the church in the eyes of those outside. As a result, Scot argues that the blanket refusal by some churches and denominations to allow women to do things they at least sometimes did in Scripture damages the witness of Christians. At the same time, he acknowledges that there may be cultural contexts other than our own where a different process of discernment, different issues and a different practice would be appropriate.

The Blue Parakeet not only makes important points, but does so with impressive precision, insight and gentleness. It is hard to imagine how one could do a better job of mediating the depth and detail of knowledge Biblical scholarship has to offer to the Christians who claim to consider the Bible important, and yet often have only a superficial grasp of what the Bible is and what it contains. The Blue Parakeet articulates its message in a manner particularly accessible to those who consider themselves "Bible-believing Christians". But even for readers outside that category, who may already be used to wrestling with difficult questions in relation to their faith and the Bible, the honesty and the seriousness with which Scot engages both the Bible and contemporary issues will make him a welcome participant in a broader dialogue. For such readers, there may be unanswered questions they would want to ask of Scot, but there will still be a great deal they can appreciate in what Scot does say.

So thank you, Scot, for writing this book. I hope that as a result many will stop ignoring or running from "blue parakeets" and discover the transformative power that can be unleashed simply by acknowledging their existence and listening to what they have to say.

30 Pieces of Silver

Historians do not know whether Judas really betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. On the one hand, betrayal by a trusted disciple is unlikely to have been invented, any more than denial by a disciple who became a prominent figure in the later church. But the sum of money may be derived from Scripture rather than knowledge of historical facts, and the discrepancies between Acts and Matthew leave us with uncertainty about whether one or neither had accurate information.

There is a level on which it may not matter, ultimately. Most of us would agree that betraying someone who trusts us for money is wrong. That is something that historical study cannot demonstrate, and depends not in the slightest on whether a historical disciple named Judas did this or that.

Such values may be worth living for, worth dying for, but historical study cannot demonstrate their truthfulness, nor provide motivation for living a certain way. Perhaps historical study could show us what happened to people who lived in certain ways. But would historical evidence that people who betrayed the trust of others often became rich persuade us that we ought to follow their example?

When it comes to other claims of value, the situation is similar. Regardless of matters relating to the burial of Jesus and a body missing from a tomb, the question of whether God exalted Jesus to heaven is clearly beyond anything historical study can investigate. And the notion that Jesus could have "ascended" implies a view of the universe and the location of heaven that is in tension with astronomical observation.

But there is no doubt that Jesus has been honored beyond the grave, in a way that may indeed be said to have mitigated or even reversed the dishonor perpetrated against him. Few even notice today that Mark's story implies that Jesus was dishonorably buried. And Jesus has been honored by countless Christians and by many others over the course of almost 2,000 years. Could any chair placed in a distant nebula offer more than that?

Christians have historically believed that Jesus gave his life for the salvation of others, and it is only relatively recently that "salvation" has become something utterly other-worldly. If Jesus was the sort of person he is depicted as in the Gospels, and he learned that through his death the lives of mystics and missionaries, doctors and drug addicts, the helpless and the heroic would be transformed in all sorts of positive ways, with no assurace that it would also help them in the afterlife, would he go through with it? Do we really need more, and more certainty, than the positive things we can experience and have experienced?

We have no choice but to betray Jesus. If we repeat his words in a context where those words imply something different, we are unfaithful to his meaning. If we change the words in order to preserve what we think was the intention, we betray the words.

Simply repeating things that no longer make sense should not be an option. None of the writings in the New Testament written after the passing of the first generation of Christians dealt with the prediction that Jesus would return before then by merely repeating his words. Some took them as spiritually true. The kingdom of God has indeed dawned, eternal life is something here and now. Others simply advocating waiting, like the author of 2 Peter, saying that eventually it would happen in a more literal fashion. Neither approach simply repeated what had been said.

And so we reach the crux of the matter. Christianity cannot simply stay the same, because even by saying the same words and repeating the same actions as times change and the world moves on results in a different message being heard. But to consciously change and adapt leads us into uncertainty, and takes far greater courage.

But such betrayal may help bring salvation to the world.

Judas and the Field of Blood

There is great difficulty fitting together the information in Matthew and Acts about Judas' death and his connection with a field known as "The Field of Blood". One has him buy the field, while the other has the authorities do so with his money. One has Judas fall headlong and burst open, the other has him hang himself. (To see the lengths to which some will go to harmonize them, click here).

If we speculate and combine the two, we might end up with Judas buying a field for use to bury foreigners who die while in Jerusalem. But then we might begin asking uncomfortable questions about whether there was a particular person from Galilee who died in Jerusalem and whom Judas might want to bury there.

If you ask me whether I think there is good evidence that Judas moved Jesus' body and buried it elsewhere, and then either killed himself or died suddenly either by accident or because of an illness (perhaps resulting from prelonged contact with a decomposing corpse), I would certainly answer no. That isn't the point of this post.

What is the point is that, from a historian's perspective, it will always seem like a more probable explanation than the one Christians more usually give, namely that God transformed Jesus' body into a resurrection body and removed it from the tomb. Historical study always deals in probabilities, and a unique supernatural event can never be considered more probable

Here, once again, we see the challenge of historical study to Christian faith. It is not that historical study in general disproves the stories of the astounding and the supernatural on the pages of Scripture. It is that historical study can rarely reach the verdict that the most likely reason we have a miracle story in an ancient text is because a miracle actually occurred. This is no different than the general tendency of juries not to explain deaths in murder trials in terms of supernatural agents and miracles. It is merely that, on the whole, deaths have some cause that is more mundane, and the criminal justice system is designed to deal with those cases. Whether we need to leave a category for "X Files" is another question, but if so, we also need to come up with some sort of ground rules about how to investigate them too.

So what do you think? Can Christians ever be justified on historical grounds in claiming that divine action is the reason the body was not in the tomb? Can we even be certain on historical grounds that the body wasn't in the tomb? And must we not admit (as I have felt compelled to) that no religious experience, however powerful, can be used to confirm the whereabouts of a body 2,000 years ago? And if all this is the case, then where does that leave Christian belief in the resurrection? Do we simply make a historical argument and then follow it with a leap of faith? Do we reinterpret the meaning of resurrection faith as something experiential and existential rather than historical? Or is some other course open to us?

Jesus and the Resurrection around the Blogosphere

Crypto-Theology asks whom Paul was referring to in 1 Corinthians 15, when he said some deny the resurrection of the dead. N. T. Wrong continues surveying the topic of visions of the resurrection. Phil Harland offers Jesus' baptism by John as an event with a high probability of being historical. All those posts should be included in the next Biblical Studies Carnival, which will be at Metacatholic.

Chris Brady doesn't ultimately answer the question of animals having an afterlife, but he does share a fake but still funny church sign dialogue on the subject.

Gods, Heroes and Terminators

I've just been catching up on some of the TV shows I like to follow. New seasons have begun, but I've only just managed to watch the Heroes season premiere and that of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which has already aired its third episode).

Both seasons began with an increase in God-talk, all the more noteworthy since such language and imagery was already present to a significant degree in seasons past.

My first reaction was to suspect that religious elements are becoming a fad, and that these might simply pepper the episodes the way they pepper the speech of many (perhaps most) religious adherents, with no deeper significance or meaning.

But I'm starting to wonder.

Both of these shows are about humans building or turning into beings with the powers that characterized the divine and the demigods of epic myths and legends. Perhaps, as technology increasingly holds out to us the possibility of overcoming death (although perhaps not permanently), becoming powerful, and many other things humans admire and aspire for, it is becoming more rather than less important to us to ask what is ultimate, what is even greater than these new heights that are, for the moment, just out of reach, but may like forbidden fruit soon be within tasting distance.

One of the greatest mysteries that still puzzle us is consciousness, how the functions of body and brain become mind and self awareness. Can a machine ever say "I love you" and really mean it? Cameron, the reprogrammed terminator, keeps looking at Jesus on the crucifix in a Catholic church with an inquisitive gaze. Eventually she asks Sarah if she believes in the resurrection. When Cameron says faith isn't part of her programming, Sarah suggests that neither is it part of hers. Once again, the question of how the human mind is "programmed" begins to come to the fore, and hopefully will continue to be explored in a serious and reflective manner.

If machines begin to explore religion, some will treat it as proof that religion is just a result of our "programming", while others will treat it as proof that machines can think and feel or that religion is indeed universal. But in fact, it is unlikely that machine religion will prove anything more than human religion will - except perhaps from the point of view of the machines themselves, if they have one.

Things Unspectacular and Slightly Less Unspectacular

Iyov memed me and so I have to tell you six unspectacular things about myself.

1) In my first "band" (yes, the quotes are necessary), the drummer didn't actually have a drum set and used to bang on a chair.

2) As a child my sister's pet turtle ate my pet goldfish.

3) I'm the only person in my department who has performed in Butler's Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall (I accompanied my son on the piano for one of his early violin recitals). I think "performed" probably needs quotes too.

4) When I lived in Romania I was extremely excited to be able to buy homogenized milk in a carton (in Romania they sell milk in plastic bags) from Hungary. I would bring back multiple containers and freeze them until the next trip.

5) I tidy up my desk about once a semester (apart from the space right in front of me where I need to work).

6) I often have trouble coming up with one last thing to mention about myself when memed, and may spend long amounts of time agonizing over it before eventually giving up.

Iyov gives the lengthy chain of transmission of the meme, but I don't have the patience to reproduce it here (or the interest to link to some of those blogs). But I do have to pass it on, and so I send it to: Drew Tatusko, Michael Halcomb, Kay Paris, Michael Homan, John Shuck and Jay Steele.

Meme Terms and Conditions

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. List six unspectacular things about you.
4. Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.

Here's more:

I've been interviewed at Pisteuomen, where you can learn even more about me. I won't try to compare the significance of the facts I share those with the ones I shared here - you can do that yourselves.

Elsewhere around the web and blogosphere, Drulogion continues looking at N. T. Wright's Surprised by Hope. NT Wrong talks about women and the empty tomb. Dharma Wants You has released its sixth assessment. Debunking Christianity shares a video that explains why those who understand science laugh at young-earth creationists:

Quote and Images of the Day

First, a quote from Steve Hammer, who writes for our local free newspaper NUVO:

"The only logical rationale I can see for supporting the Republican ticket is if you belong to the subset of the population that wants to see the Book of Revelation come true in their lifetime and a vice president who can take over and lead us to her Alaskan refuge after the Rapture."

That sentiment seems to match that depicted in this poster (HT Shuck & Jive):

The ultimate source is apparently Street Prophets, which also pointed to this gem from I Can Has Cheezburger:

All of this goes to show that it isn't just Unitarian Universalists who pick and choose from the Bible (HT Glocal Christianity):

There's a lot of heated rhetoric on both sides. I seriously believe that if it could be demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that neither side can simply quote the Bible as self-evidently supporting their viewpoint, perhaps we could get talking about the real issues.

But to do that safely, we'll need to leave our scissors and other sharp objects at home...

Harrison Bergeron

I've been recommending to friends for a very long time that they see the movie Harrison Bergeron, but I've regularly heard from them that they couldn't get hold of a copy.

That will no longer be an issue. As was recently pointed out at SF Signal, one can now watch the movie online.

(If the embeded player doesn't work, click here)

For those who've never heard about it, the movie is set after the second American revolution, when people have finally realized that people are not "all created equal", and thus given the government the responsibility of making and keeping everyone equally mediocre. Watch it - I'm sure you'll enjoy it!

Introductory Lessons in Aramaic

I just happened across Eric D. Reymond's site Introductory Lessons in Aramaic. I know from keyword statistics that some people have found their way to this blog looking for just this sort of resource, so I thought I'd pass it on!

No One Takes The Whole Bible Literally

I've posted a clip on YouTube that recaps a key point that came up in our Sunday school class this past weekend, as well as in a recent blog post, namely that no one simply "believes the whole Bible" and "takes it all literally".

The Burial of Jesus: First Amazon Review

My book The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith has received its first review on amazon.com. The review is in mediocre English and gives the book a mediocre rating. :-)

I'm still waiting for copies from the publisher to send to a few people who asked for review copies, as well as to some journals and RBL.

You can now search inside the book at amazon.co.uk, but their keyword search feature doesn't seem to be working yet. The one at amazon.com is working now, however, and so you can see what my book says about your favorite topic!

On Friday I'll be talking about the subject of the book at a student-faculty discussion forum at the University of Indianapolis.

The [Euphemism] Post

I've been hesitant to dive into this particular subject. I want to keep my blog at its PG rating. At any rate, here is a post for those more reserved readers who wish to give my previous one a wide berth.

I've posted on same-gender relationships before (more than once), most recently in conjunction with discussions around the biblioblogosphere (see e.g. Metacatholic and Lingamish - the latter, ironically enough, sounds like it could be the Sanskrit for "sorta phallic shaped". There are some interesting posts relevant to this subject at Scot McKnight's blog Jesus Creed. There are of course many blogs that touch on the subject one way or the other). But it seems that there is no way to adequately discuss same-gender relationships from a Christian perspective, without talking about you-know-what in general, and more specifically, asking the following question:

What makes "IT" good or bad?

No, I don't mean what makes it great or terrible as far as mutual enjoyment is concerned, but what makes it licit or illicit, positive or negative, praiseworthy or the target of condemnation.
It seems clear that simply quoting Bible verses will not answer this question. There is much in the Bible that reflects views of intercourse (and what is enticing, for that matter) that are no longer current today. The Bible only condemns using a slave girl for you-know-what if she is promised to another man, and doesn't treat it the same as if this were a free individual. How would one apply that today?! Nor is the practice of concubinage condemned. Indeed, this might be one of those places where, if those rebelling against conservative Christian mores were to really dig into the Bible, they could use it to good effect!

But as any Christian theologian who is not a fundamentalist will acknowledge, simply quoting Bible verses will not settle this matter (or any matter, for that matter). One must take into account what we know about our evolutionary history. If we had evolved from swans, there would quite possibly have little or nothing about intercourse in our various world Scriptures. But we didn't, and that provides us with a particular legacy and a particular framework to work within. One must take into account changes in the age at which people tend to reach puberty and changes in the age at which people tend to marry. One must discuss matters of psychology. One must address the imbalance in the ways males and females are viewed both in ancient texts and in modern cultures. One must ask how much of the Bible's teachings, and our own cultural heritage, had to do with preventing pregnancy out of wedlock and the shame that accompanied it, rather than anything intrinsically to do with you-know-what per se.

What, if we take this approach, could we expect society as a whole to agree on in terms of basic principles? I doubt that most people want a complete free-for-all. Few would consider the existence of a minimum legal age inappropriate. And I suspect that even in our libertine age many people would prefer it if their life partner were not comparing their performance to that of others they've been with. But there is a need both to define a bare minimum within which consenting adults can do what they personally deem right, and to define a Christian position that holds values like love and fidelity as the standard to which Christians seek to hold themselves.

There are all sorts of angles and issues. But ultimately we need to revisit the question of what makes any particular act right or wrong, good or evil. Unless we have some such principles in place, we are unlikely to make much progress discussing the specifics of ...you know.

What do you think? Please do share your unique perspectives and experiences - anonymously if necessary. But do also join in the discussion with your own usual online identity, since this is an issue that is ultimately about interpersonal relations: both matters of you-know-what, marriage, love, and reproduction, but also the interpersonal interactions necessary to hammer out guidelines and debate issues as a democratic society.

The Sex Post

I've been hesitant to dive into this particular subject. I want to keep my blog at its PG rating. Yet just about every day someone finds their way to my blog searching for "hermaphrodite sex", so this post shouldn't change things, I guess.

I've posted on homosexuality before (more than once), most recently in conjunction with discussions around the biblioblogosphere (see e.g. Metacatholic and Lingamish - the latter, ironically enough, sounds like it could be the Sanskrit for "sorta phallic shaped". There are some interesting posts relevant to this subject at Scot McKnight's blog Jesus Creed. There are of course many blogs that touch on the subject one way or the other). But it seems that there is no way to adequately discuss same-sex relationships from a Christian perspective, without talking about sex in general, and more specifically, asking the following question:

What makes sex good or bad?

No, I don't mean what makes it great or terrible as far as mutual enjoyment is concerned, but what makes it licit or illicit, positive or negative, praiseworthy or the target of condemnation.

It seems clear that simply quoting Bible verses will not answer this question. There is much in the Bible that reflects views of sex (and what is sexy, for that matter) that are no longer current today. The Bible only condemns using a slave girl for a man's sexual satisfaction if she is promised to another man, and doesn't treat it the same as if this were a free individual. How would one apply that today?! Nor is the practice of concubinage condemned. Indeed, this might be one of those places where, if those rebelling against conservative Christian sexual mores were to really dig into the Bible, they could use it to good effect!

But as any Christian theologian who is not a fundamentalist will acknowledge, simply quoting Bible verses will not settle this matter (or any matter, for that matter). One must take into account what we know about our evolutionary history. If we had evolved from swans, there would quite possibly have little or nothing about sex in our various world Scriptures. But we didn't, and that provides us with a particular legacy and a particular framework to work within. One must take into account changes in the age at which people tend to reach puberty and changes in the age at which people tend to marry. One must discuss matters of psychology. One must address the imbalance in the ways sexually active males and females are viewed both in ancient texts and in modern cultures. One must ask how much of the Bible's teachings, and our own cultural heritage, had to do with preventing pregnancy out of wedlock and the shame that accompanied it, rather than anything intrinsically to do with sex per se.

What, if we take this approach, could we expect society as a whole to agree on in terms of basic principles? I doubt that most people want a complete free-for-all. Few would consider the existence of a minimum legal age inappropriate. And I suspect that even in our libertine age many people would prefer it if their life partner were not comparing their performance to that of others they've been with. But there is a need both to define a bare minimum within which consenting adults can do what they personally deem right, and to define a Christian position that holds values like love and fidelity as the standard to which Christians seek to hold themselves.

There are all sorts of angles and issues ("positions" didn't seem like the right word). But ultimately we need to revisit the question of what makes any particular sex act right or wrong, good or evil. Unless we have some such principles in place, we are unlikely to make much progress discussing the specifics of same-sex sex.

What do you think? Please do share your unique perspectives and experiences - anonymously if necessary. But do also join in the discussion with your own usual online identity, since this is an issue that is ultimately about interpersonal relations: both matters of sex, marriage, love, and reproduction, but also the interpersonal interactions necessary to hammer out guidelines and debate issues as a democratic society.

Search Inside

Although the actual keyword search does not appear to work yet as of my posting this, my book The Burial of Jesus is now part of the Search Inside program, which means that you can see the book from cover to cover and browse it before making a decision about whether to buy it, recommend it to friends, or whatever else.

Take a look. You know you want to!

Online Resources for New Testament Studies

Via an advertisement on the N. T. Wright Page, I discovered the Wesley Ministries Network, which has online lectures (many of which one must pay for) but also free materials in the form of lectures and articles by scholars such as (to give one example) Larry Hurtado.

The Burial of Jesus: Now Available in the UK

The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith can now be purchased through amazon.co.uk!

The Shame of Jesus' Burial

Ultimately my view of the burial of Jesus as a dishonorable one was shaped in particular by Raymond Brown's conclusions in his magnificent two-volume study, The Death of the Messiah. But another scholar who has also explored this evidence and drawn a similar conclusion is Byron McCane. His chapter on the subject, "'Where No One Had Yet Been Laid': The Shame of Jesus' Burial", is available online.

If anyone is interested in writing a review of The Burial of Jesus for Amazon.com, their blog or some other print or online venue, and needs a copy of the book, please do get in touch with me by e-mail, providing a mailing address and where the review is expected to appear. BookSurge does not provide copies to reviewers for free, but I am certainly willing to pay for and send out some copies if it will help spread the word and draw more attention to the book. I don't particularly like engaging in self promotion, but then again, if I didn't think the book was worth reading, I wouldn't have published it!

Solutions for Homosexual Christians

Christians with possessions face a problem, at least in theory, because they are living in direct disobedience to an explicit command of Jesus, found in Luke 14:33. But several interpretative options to get around this have long been used. It is generally considered enough to give up some possessions, or unnecessary or superfluous ones. Alternatively, some (in particular rich Christians, which includes most Christians in the United States considered in a global context) would say that what matters is to not be attached to possessions, rather than literally giving them up.

For the sake of equity, it is only fair that homosexual Christians be given these same interpretative options when it comes to passages that may raise questions for them. If gay and lesbian Christians simply give up superfluous sex with a person of the same gender, or they surrender their attachment to it, that should be enough to satisfy any Christian who owns possessions.

Don't you agree?

Galactica Elections

For those looking for amusement rather than controversy, I commend the Battlestar Galactica election bumper stickers, T-shirts and other paraphernalia offered at Galactica Sitrep. From there, you'll discover there are still other offerings of a similar sort around the web.

As a fan of the show, my slogan is "Four more years". But I guess one more season and some spin-offs will have to suffice.

If You're Bored...

If you're bored, you can always go see if you can keep some discussion going over on Amazon.com, where I am trying to start a discussion on the same topic as my recent post here, namely the Bible and history. Or, if you liked my video clip on YouTube about an aspect of my new book, The Burial of Jesus, just go back one more time and rate it.

Yet another option is to go over to David Ker's blog one more time, where in the comments section I've openly confessed a serious sin.

Thanks, and have a great (non-boring) weekend...

Alliance for Science Essay Contest

From the NCSE:

The Alliance for Science -- a non-profit organization which seeks "to heighten public understanding and support for science and to preserve the distinctions between science and religion in the public sphere" -- is holding its third annual essay contest. The theme is "In Darwin's Footsteps," and students are encouraged "to identify and write about a single scientist, a group of scientists, or a scientific organization that best exemplifies the character and quality of work that sustained Darwin throughout his career."

Essays will be judged for their scientific focus, and correctness, quality of analysis and interpretation, personal voice and interest, and clarity and style of writing. Cash prizes will be given to the top four students, with $300.00 for first place. Sponsoring teachers of the top two students will receive cash for purchase of educational materials. Additional prizes include educational DVDs and books such as Carl Zimmer's Microcosm, Lauri Lebo's The Devil in Dover, and Kenneth R. Miller's Only a Theory.

This contest is open to all high school students living in the United States and its territories. Students must submit individual original essays and have a sponsoring teacher. Sponsoring teachers can include former teachers, science program coordinators, or science museum staff. Electronic submissions (via e-mail) are preferred, but printed essays will also be accepted.

Registration forms and official contest rules are posted at the Alliance for Science website.

For the Alliance for Science contest website, visit: http://www.allianceforscience.org/essay

To read the winning essays from the 2008 contest, visit: http://www.allianceforscience.org/essay_2008_main

Nature, Scripture and Homosexuality

David Ker has jumped into the ferocious waters of the issue of homosexuality by commenting on Ray Boltz coming out. Here's what I commented on the subject:

Presumably if we want to do the subject justice, we'll need to get beyond the Levitical code, which includes a great deal that is considered to be of no ongoing relevance by the vast majority of Christians.

If we focus on the New Testament, we find Paul using a couple of terms that certainly are not obvious correspondents to the modern English word "homosexual". We also find him talking about what is and isn't "natural".

The same terminology is applied to homosexuality by philosophers and other authors in the same era. What makes homosexuality "unnatural" is that it places a male (who is by nature active) into the passive role: in essence, it places a man in the role of a female, which was considered demeaning to a male.

I can (to at least an extent) understand those who do indeed consider women inherently inferior and passive, and a man taking on any traditional women's role demeaning, continuing to find Paul's view of homosexuality persuasive. But to the extent that a great many Christians no longer find Paul's assumed cultural view of women persuasive or binding, isn't it appropriate to rethink same-sex relationships, given that Paul's view of them was based on those same cultural assumptions?

As for Ray Boltz, even though many are dismayed, I think there will also be many who would like to say to him "Thank you for giving to the Lord" all the more because he had the courage to be honest about this.

Intelligent Design, Academic Freedom and Peer Review

I just discovered Opposing Viewpoints (HT The Panda's Thumb), and decided to chime in on the discussion of Intelligent Design over there. Here's what I wrote in a sub-forum on academic freedom and ID:

Perhaps what is needed is to distinguish between academic freedom and peer review. Many regulations about academic freedom are broad, and like laws and regulations about free speech, can protect someone like a tenured professor from being fired even if researching something that most academics consider nonsense.

Academic freedom is one thing. But whether the research being done by someone whose academic freedom is protected is in fact worthwhile or not is a completely separate question. To determine that, it is necessary to look at the evidence, the evaluation of peers and other experts, the fruitfulness of the research program, and other such factors. It is in this area that ID is clearly lacking, as even some of its proponents acknowledge.

Proponents of ID can call for academic freedom all they want, but the freedom to explore a topic has no relevance, ultimately, to the question of the merit of one's conclusions.

Intelligent Design, it must be recalled, was the prevailing viewpoint for a very long time. So was flood geology. Far from there being a conspiracy to stifle such views, many scientists in the 19th century were extremely reluctant to depart from these established viewpoints. But the consensus changed because of the enormous amounts of evidence pointing to a different set of conclusions being more likely.

And this, in a nutshell, is the issue. The proponents of Intelligent Design and of young-earth creationism have this in common: they want to drag science back to the 19th century, as though all the progress and all the evidence amassed in the mean time doesn't matter.

Jesus Probably Rose From The Dead: On Historical Study and Christian Apologetics

In thinking about the issues of history and faith, I've come to the conclusion that a key challenge facing Christianity in our time can be outlined as follows:

1. First, Christianity as historically understood has a close connection with historical events.
2. Second, historical study provides the only tools available by which to answer questions such as "Is this text from ancient Israel a folktale, a parable, a work of historical fiction, or a well-documented historical account of actual events?"
3. Third, historical study deals in probabilities. The best it could ever say about Jesus' resurrection, for instance, assuming it can deal with such an occurrence at all, is that "Jesus probably rose from the dead. That is the most likely of several possible explanations for the rise of this early Christian belief." [I'm not saying this is the actual state of the historical evidence, just offering a "best-case scenario"].
4. Fourth, it seems like an inadequate form of the Gospel to go around proclaiming "It is probable that Jesus rose from the dead."

This is the conundrum Christians face. Even if we want to take historical study seriously, it can't provide what most religious believers want: certainty. So even if the likelihood of Biblical accounts could be established (and in many instances this is clearly not the case), what is Christianity's message?

Is Christianity faced with the choice of proclaiming a Gospel about what is probable, or of focusing on those things we can experience for ourselves in the present? Is there a third option?

On The Shoulders of Giants

I think it is important to think and reflect a little further, to dig a little deeper, in relation to the subject of my recent post about Abraham and child sacrifice. Clearly I am willing to be critical of the story, to disagree. But I also am profoundly aware that my perspective on child sacrifice as something horrific is itself shaped by the Biblical tradition and one or more of its trajectories. I see the problematic nature of the story about Abraham and Isaac, at least in part, because I stand on the shoulders of others, who stand on the shoulders of others, who stand ultimately on the shoulders of the author(s) of Genesis.

We make progress by critically evaluating the legacy of those who have gone before us. And so it should be. So go ahead and criticize the giant. He can take it. But it might not hurt to also take time occasionally to thank him for the ride. After all, if you achieve the status of giant, how will you want those standing on your shoulders to view your legacy. And if we never achieve that status, or even if we do, we remain grateful for the many giants who helped us see further than we could on our own.

Then again, maybe this reflects my own distinctive perspective, as one who is somewhat "altitudinally challenged".

Anointed for Burial?

Here's my first attempt at video recording myself and posting it on YouTube. I talk for about 5 minutes about a topic touched on in my book, namely the difference between Mark and John about whether or not Jesus was anointed when he was buried. I'd gratefully welcome any feedback on how I might do it better next time!

Bibliobloggers in Boston?

Are there plans to have some sort of bibliobloggers' get-together in Boston at SBL this year? If not, there should be!

International "Use Your Turn Signal" Signal

There is a need for a way for drivers to draw attention to those who, through their failure to use their turn signal when driving, make the road a more dangerous and more stressful place. The current signal (a glaring angry look) appears not to serve as an effective means of communicating the point clearly, as it is easily confused with the very similar international gesture for "hang up and drive".


I suggest that we begin to use a swift up and down motion on the turn signal control in the car, resulting in alternating blinks of one's signal lights, as the signal to those ahead of or behind us that they are neglecting to use their turn signal appropriately.


For "hang up and drive" a more effective signal is also needed. The best I've been able to come up with so far is this:

When you spot someone sitting longer than necessary at a stop sign or doing something else inappropriate because they are driving while on the phone, firmly place your hand on the horn and press hard. When they hang up the phone, remove your hand. If this symbol has the potential to be confused with others, perhaps at the very least they will hang up as they try to figure out why you are honking!

Craig and Crossley on the Resurrection

Over on The Burial of Jesus blog, I've shared the debate between William Lane Craig and James Crossley about the resurrection of Jesus, which apparently took place back in 2007. A major reason for writing my book on the burial of Jesus is the relevance of that subject to how we view the traditions about the empty tomb, resurrection appearances and so on. So obviously this debate interests me. I've embedded a YouTube version of the debate over on the other blog. I'm leaving the other form embedded here, although for me it seems not to work (although the link does).

William Lane Craig vs James Crossley - Resurrection Debate

If there is something that is a crucial underlying question (one that I address in the book), it is whether historians will ever be able to say that the most likely explanation for the written stories we now have, and for the beliefs of the early Christians, is that Jesus entered the life of the age to come in a bodily sense. And as a person with a personal Christian faith, one of the major struggles I've faced is to acknowledge the ways in which evidence about the burial of Jesus makes other explanations plausible, even if ultimately we acknowledge that the best (and perhaps only honest) answer a historian can give about what happened to the body of Jesus is "we don't know".

Standing in Abraham's Shoes

N. T. Wrong shared this cartoon from YouTube about someone finding himself in the same situation as Abraham in the story in Genesis. What do you think of the advice his co-worker gives him?

I also liked this cartoon that was shared at The Rev's Rumbles. I'm not sure why exactly...

1 Corinthians 13 paraphrased for academics

If I speak in the languages of peoples living and dead, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have a PhD and can fathom all sorts of mysteries and significant amounts of knowledge, and if I have the common sense to know that "faith that can move mountains" is a metaphor, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body for the purpose of scientific research or organ transplants, but have not love, I gain nothing.

If I have knowledge of biology sufficient to keep me from falling for young-earth creationist claptrap and intelligent design pseudoscience, but have not love, I am but a prattling primate or a chattering chimpanzee.

If I have an understanding of Biblical studies to rival the most famous scholars, and publications galore on my CV, but have not love, all I have written is like a hypothetical source lost in the sands of time.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there is scholarship, it will go out of print; where there are discoveries, they will be superseded, or else will become familiar as common knowledge and seem ho hum to future generations; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we understand in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a chrome car bumper; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these remain: faith, hope and love. Oh yeah, and knowledge, at least for the time being. And wisdom. But at any rate, even if the list went on forever, the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13 paraphrased (based on the NIV)

King of the Nasoraeans

The Mandaean text Dmuth Kushta ("Image of Truth") has only been published in booklet form by Majid Fandi al-Mubaraki in 2002, and isn't even in the Drower collection. In it, there is a reference to a "king of the Nasoraeans". This could be an important historical clue, perhaps comparable in value to the reference to Artapanus in the Haran Gawaita. Or it could simply reflect the use of "king" as a term for a "priest".

The entire phrase in which this is found is tantalizing , but what if anything it tells us remains to be seen. And it will be a while before I manage to work through the whole text, much less make sense of it.

The Burial of Jesus: Now Available at Amazon!

Good news! My book The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith is now available for purchase at amazon.com.

I do hope that some of my regular readers will read it, and will let me know what they think (whether here or at the blog I've created specifically for the book). But I'd be particularly grateful if you could find the time to recommend the book for purchase by your local university, seminary and/or public libraries. If they ask for a flyer, you can always print or e-mail them this one or this one.

Thank you in advance for helping to spread the word!

Cleesing Determinism

Evolving Thoughts shared this wonderful clip under the heading "Cleesing the God Gene":

Elsewhere around the blogosphere, New Scientist has an article on the possibility that evolution may have preceded life. Undeception has an interesting post on "First Things and Last Things". And Peter Rollins talks about our desire for a master we can dominate.

The Only True God: Pre-Order Your Copy Today!

My book The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context, forthcoming from University of Illinois Press in March of 2009, is now available for pre-order on amazon.com. A page has also been created for The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith and so I expect to be able to announce that it is available for purchase soon.

Presumably this means that you can go ahead and start recommending one or both of these books to your local public and/or university library. If you do that, it will help me more than simply buying the book yourself (although I obviously have no objection to your doing that too, if you are so inclined!) . The ISBNs and other such information are available on the amazon.com pages.

Tell God No

What should you do if God tells you to sacrifice your child? Abraham (according to the story in Genesis) said "Yes Lord" and took Isaac up Mount Moriah. According to the story, he was interrupted before he could go through with it by a voice that said "Now I know that you fear God..."

I think most of us today would be more likely to react by saying "Now we know that Abraham fears God" if he refused to respond to the voice he heard. If someone went through with such an act, we would justifiably view them as insane. It is not just the hearing of voices that would be an issue, but the notion that it would be appropriate because one heard a voice to set aside our concepts of morality.

It doesn't seem to me to be a viable option for anyone today to say "This story is literally true and teaches values to which I assent". Those who say they accept the story's factuality and its moral and theological authority only do so in the certainty (gained to some extent from their exposure to the story itself) that God would never actually ask them to do such a thing. But the story, if treated as factual, requires Abraham to believe God could well ask him to do such a thing.

Personally, I do think there is a better option than either taking the story as "Gospel truth" or discarding it as an abhorrent relic of a morality that we today cannot espouse. We can recognize behind this story an author who is creatively adapting traditions about famous ancestors of the Israelites, in order to subvert the all-too-common ancient practice of child sacrifice. We can then find inspiration in the story to follow the author's example and rework other stories, in the Bible or in our wider cultural heritage, in similarly subversive ways. We can look to the stories not with the assumption that they will always indicate to us what is right and what is wrong, but with the expectation that we are part of a process of defining what is right. It takes courage to try to change a society's definition. And keep in mind that it is at least partly thanks to the author of the story in Genesis that it is today taken for granted that killing one's child is not the way to go about pleasing a deity.

So what should you do if you hear a voice commanding you to sacrifice your child? Simple: TELL GOD NO. Any deity worth worshipping will be pleased by your disobedience to such a command. And then go forth and tell the story. It will make a very appropriately subversive recasting of the Abraham story.

Author Proof

Today I received my proof copy of The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith. After soliciting some feedback on how the final version looks (I can't be objective about this, obviously), I gave my approval for the book to become available for purchase. It should be available within a week or so. I'll let you know!

Blogging Creationism: The Highlights

Having provided round-ups of my blogging on Intelligent Design and on LOST, I thought I'd follow up with a collection of my posts on creationism. There is some overlap with the subject of Intelligent Design, but enough distinction (and enough separate posts) to make it seem worth doing. I've put serious ones, and in particular ones showing the problems with the way young-earth creationists misuse Biblical texts, towards the beginning.

Creationism's Cartoon Physics
Teaching the Genesis Creation Stories
Evidence and Faith: The Creationist Paradox
Let God Be True And Every Young-Earth Creationist A Liar
Wisdom and Foolishness, Pride and Judgment
Award for the Most Hypocritical Argument in the History of Creationism
The plain sense of the Bible
Statement of Faith for Biblical Literalists
Literal Days vs. 24-Hour Days, and Adam vs. Christ
The Tree Of Life
Got Genesis? Homogenized and Pasteurized!
The Genesis Creation Stories and the Environment
Let Us Make Human Beings In Our Image
Review of Monkey Girl by Edward Humes
Creationism and Censorship
'Tis But A Scratch
Young-Earth Creationism isn't Science, but a Cult!
Fossil Hunting
AIG Creation Museum refuted by fossils found beneath museum
Evolutionists, Darwinism and Crackpot Theories
The Argument From Incredulity
Taking Things On Faith
God is a mystery, not an explanation
A Review of God and Evolution
The View From The Center Of The Universe
The Evolutionist Conspiracy
The Darwin Code
Sean B. Carroll
Things Your Minister Wishes He Could Tell You
Blog the Controversy
On Millstones and Stumbling Blocks
Transitional Forms as Evidence for Evolution: Tiktaalik and cdesign proponentsists
The Discovery Institute Responds
Answers in Genesis Wikipedia Edits
Privileged Planet? Copernicus vs. Goldilocks: Smackdown
Monkeys and Typewriters on the Edge of Evolution
Evolution of the Marshmallow
Creation/Evolution of a Vice-Presidential Candidate
Quote of the Day (Daniel Radosh)
Quote of the Day (John Derbyshire)
Which Quote Of The Day? (Gordon J. Glover x2)
Quote of the Day (P. Z. Myers)
Quote of the Day (Jonathan Merritt)
Quote of the Day (Stephen Moshier)
Quotes of the Day (Arthur Peacocke and Howard J. Van Till)
Around the Blogosphere
The Banana and Peanut Butter Arguments on YouTube
Around the Blogosphere (The End of the Banana Argument)
Around the Blogosphere
Religion and Science on YouTube
Evolution...Sunday...School
Evolution Saturday: Resources from the National Center for Science Education
ID Like To Make A Prediction
Ruffled Feathers
Heresy: Try It, It's Good For You!
Creatio ex nihilo
Celtic Chimps and Silly Stories
The Unicorn Museum
Benna the Stein
Paul the Pastafarisee
We Wish You An Intelligently-Designed Creationmas
Down With Secular Mathematics!

Quote of the Day (Keith Ward)

"Religious beliefs cannot remain what they were before the rise of modern science any more than ancient scientific beliefs can. It would be absurd to insist that ancient religious beliefs should remain unchanged when our whole view of the universe has changed radically" (Keith Ward, The Big Questions in Science and Religion (West Conshohocken: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008) p.4).

Discovered by Discover

The Bad Astronomy blog over at the Discover magazine web site mentions me and links to my post on "Evolution and Indoctrination". To think that if Jim West hadn't posted what he did, none of this might have happened...

Dharma Wants You

The Dharma Wants You site is still recruiting for the Dharma Initative. To register you first take a test. There is someone talking in places in a language I don't understand. Presumably there are clues to be found on the site.

One thing you can do after registering is create your own quiz. Click here to take the one I created.

Around the Blogosphere

Jesus Creed reflects on apostasy from orthodoxy. Metacatholic points out a Christian reconstructionist web site about Palin.

Debunking Christianity has a game theory approach to Genesis 3. It is problematic, but also interesting, and certainly worth a look. For a rabbinic approach, check out the wonderfully-named Sefer Ha-Bloggadah.

As I wait for my book to become available, I'm glad that documentaries and blogs are keeping interest in the burial of Jesus alive.

Sandwalk asks whether science should speak to faith.

Home Sweet Home

I was surprised when, seeing a New Testament position in New York City advertised recently, I did not feel extremely tempted to apply. As a native of NYC, I do miss it, enough so that I was rather glad when, coming back from an overseas conference trip not that long ago, we missed a connection and had to spend a day in the city waiting for the next flight back to Indianapolis.

I'm glad, however, that I was teaching in Manhattan seven years ago, in the 2001 academic year. I think it would have been far more traumatic for me to see what was going on and to be far away, cut off from the city. It was better to be there, even though it meant experiencing the posters on walls and lampposts all over the city. Even though it meant experiencing the nauseating smell of death on a subway trip.

I regret that, about a week prior to September 11th, 2001, I decided to get off at the World Trade Center stop rather than my usual one, and did not take the time to look up, to take a good long stare at the twin towers.

That year one of the schools I taught at was Alliance Theological Seminary, located halfway between Canal Street where vehicle traffic was being stopped, and the place where all access to Ground Zero was being stopped. The seminary was closed for about a week.

That year, teaching a class on Biblical interpretation was different. We couldn't simply gloss over the imprecations of Psalm 137. We had to talk about them, differently than we might have in some other academic year.

I don't know if I will ever live in New York City again, but I hope to get back more often than I currently do. I've visited and even lived in a number of wonderful cities around the world, but New York remains special.

Blogging LOST

Here are links to all the substantial posts I've written about LOST (so far):

LOST: The Island and the People
Religion and Morality in an Infinite Multiverse
LOST in a Parallel Universe
LOST in a Zoroastrian Multiverse
LOST Theories
LOST Tabula Rasa
LOST and Solitary
LOST Mothers of the Chosen
Why the Red Sox Always LOST the World Series
Deus ex Machina LOST Boone
LOST Exodus from Season 1
LOST Whispers
LOST Teddy Bear
LOST Book of the Law
Nathan the LOST Prophet?
LOST Body
LOST in a Hot Air Balloon
Oceanic Flight 815 Was Shot Down
LOST: The Beginning of the End
LOST Latest
LOST: So It Begins
LOST Season 4 Begins
Confirmed LOST
LOST in Speculation
LOST Latest
LOST: in need of a constant
LOST of the Time Lords
The OTHER Woman: LOST as Metaphysical Soap Opera
Sun LOST Jin
The Island has not LOST track of Michael
A Time Traveller LOST in the Sahara Desert
LOST Appendix
LOST: Who's in charge here?
LOST Power
LOST: Stealth Education
LOST Nation of Islam?
There's No Place Like LOST
LOST: The Shape Of Seasons To Come
LOST: Three Possible Endings
Who LOST The Temporal Cold War?
LOST: A Theory On Time Travel
Christian Shepherd: Time Traveller?
The Sound of Things to Come: Benjamin Linus Plays Rachmaninov

I can't believe how many there are! I wonder if it would be worth putting them together in a book...

Fans of LOST may be interested in the LOST widget available at the ABC LOST web site.

Jesus and Tom Riddle as Children

Today in my class "Heresy" (about extracanonical early Christian literature) we looked at the infancy Gospels of James and Thomas. The former had stories nad traditions that were familiar to several students. The latter was, as always, a surprise and a bit of a puzzle for them. But how can one not find fascinating a story in which one readsthings like the following?

The teacher became exasperated and hit him on the head. Jesus got angry and cursed him, and the teacher immediately lost consciousness and fell facedown on the ground (Infancy Gospel of Thomas 14:4).

I sometimes wonder whether the author intended his or her work to be taken completely seriously. But the work does relate to serious questions for Christians who claim that Jesus was God incarnate, and particular for those who claim the incarnation happened when Jesus was conceived rather than at some later point such as his baptism.

What does it mean to say a five year old child is God incarnate? If one imagines Jesus as a child being perfectly behaved, doesn't that involve denying his genuine humanity? If one maintains the Chalcedonian definition, does one end up having to say bizarre things like "God had a dirty diaper"?

Gospels like these don't merely fill in the gaps left by New Testament Gospels. They continue the same process of exploring the idea that if someone was special as an adult, they must have been special in the same sort of way as a child.

The story in the Protoevangelium of James (as it is also known) likewise provides a great opportunity to explore the Euthyphro dilemma (whether whatever God defines as good is good, or whether goodness is extrinsic to God), and the idea that it is OK for God to kill whoever angers him - a view that makes most modern people uncomfortable but seems to be taken for granted in this story.

We also talked about other topics, like whether the author and readers/enjoyers of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are likely to have been women.

This is such a fun class to teach!

Students and Sources

The Butler University library has been working to provide resources to help students identify and appropriately use reliable sources in their studies and independent research. I mentioned once before the library's helpful plagiarism tutorial. Since then, my friend and colleague Brad Matthies has created another online course about sources, which helps students discern between different types of publications and different degrees of reliability. I hope other educators and students will find them useful.

LOST in a Hot Air Balloon

I'm continuing watching old episodes of LOST, and am about two-thirds of the way through season 2. In the episode "The Whole Truth", I was struck to notice (I hadn't before) that the pregnancy test Sun took was made by Widmore Labs. So when Kate asked ironically "Who carries a pregnancy test with them on a plane?" it wasn't a throw-away line. We were supposed to ask ourselves that question seriously. And the answer we're to come up with once we acquire more clues is that someone associated with Widmore was on the plane. Whether that individual has survived until the present is unclear - Nathan would make a good candidate, as I mentioned once before. But given what we know of LOST, it is easy to imagine it being revealed in a future season that some important action had been taking place during the time of the first four seasons, but without involving the characters that have been the focus of the story thus far. Maybe the introduction of Nikki and Paulo was an attempt to see how viewers would react to that.

Why was Widmore trying to use a flight full of people to get someone to the island? Perhaps because his previous attempt, tracking Henry Gale in a hot air balloon, had been unsuccessful - Henry had been spotted and killed by Benjamin Linus and his associates.

As you may have missed, and as I did until it was pointed out to me, the hot air balloon that brought Henry Gale to the island was made by Widmore. And, while it is clear that Widmore products are as common on LOST as ACME products on Road Runner cartoons, it still seems appropriate to suggest that the balloon may have been used by Widmore. Of course, Henry Gale may not have known that his balloon was being used to locate the island (one imagines that Widmore might not paste his logo on the side of a balloon used for a covert operation), but it still seems too much for this to be a coincidence.

Bring on season 5!

End of the American Century: Bankrupt America

My colleague Dave Mason created a blog connected to his new book, The End of the American Century. Since he has now posted his first blog entry, I thought I'd try to send him some traffic and give him a baptism of fire into the wonderful world of blogging. His first post is entitled "Bankrupt America". If the subject of the book/post sound interesting, why not pay his blog a visit and take a look?

More Music from the Archive

In addition to books about composers and sheet music, archive.org has actual music that you can listen to and download. I presume few readers have heard the American Symphony (No.3) by Romanian composer Serban Nichifor, so I'll offer it as one example.

Blogging Intelligent Design: The Highlights

Here are some past posts of mine about Intelligent Design. I thought it might be useful to list them in one place, for readers' convenience, and in particular for the benefit of new readers. Enjoy!

Monkeys and Typewriters on the Edge of Evolution
Design, Information, and Languages such as DNA and Indo-European
Transitional Forms as Evidence for Evolution
An Immoral, Godless Pseudoscience
Evolutionist Conspiracy
The Darwin Code
Evolutionists, Darwinism and Crackpot Theories
The Argument From Incredulity
It's Not Whether You Win Or Lose
Seeking Truth vs. Seeking Victory
Which is worse: Dishonestly claiming knowledge, or dishonestly claiming ignorance?
'Tis But A Scratch
An Appeal To The Public About Intelligent Design
Shoehorning Evidence
Reactions to "Judgment Day"
Question for Denyse O'Leary, Phillip Johnson and Casey Luskin
Sean B. Carroll
Francisco J. Ayala
Intelligent Design Criminology
DaveScot's Unsolved Murder
Uncommented Descent
A Mathematician, A Computer Scientist And An Engineer Walk Into A Bar...I Mean, A Biology Classroom
Peer Review a Career Stopper?
Should Astrologers Get Tenure?
Plan To Undermine Intelligent Design (But Someone Beat Me To It)
The Heart Of The Matter: What Does God Do?
Reviews of Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution
Review of God and Evolution
Review of Mike Gene, The Design Matrix
Quote from Casey Luskin
Don't Just Honor The Book - Read It!
On Millstones and Stumbling Blocks
Natural Explanation and the Inexplicable
The Banana and Peanut Butter Arguments
Tasty Revelations With Cheese
Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Intelligent Design vs. Quantum Computation
Intelligent Design: Philo vs. Ken Ham
Can we backengineer a bug?

What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?

I highly recommend Delwin Brown's book What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?: A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious (New York: Seabury, 2008). Of course, it is always encouraging to find others drawing the same conclusions and making the same points as oneself. For instance, Brown makes the same point I made not long ago on this blog, namely that the fundamentalist denial of the obvious diversity in the Bible renders its position unbiblical (pp.17,19; see also pp.23-24). Brown seeks to plot a balanced course between the extremes of conservativism and liberalism (for he distinguishes between 'liberal' and 'progressive'): "To pretend that our past histories are absolute or inerrant is a mistake, but to ignore the power of our fallible traditions to transform the present is also a grave mistake" (p.14).

Brown explains that the Bible itself provides a model for us. In the Bible we find authors who disagree with other authors whose works are also part of Scripture. This should encourage us to follow their example and dare to disagree with Biblical authors in the same sort of way, while remaining in constructive dialogue with them (pp.24-25). In connection with this, Brown's reading of the Tower of Babel story as about God intervening when a drive towards uniformity got out of hand is intriguing and challenging (p.65). Diversity is viewed as essential to keep us from ever simply equating our views and assumptions with the unquestionable, obvious truth.

If I may sum up his points on these matters with a bold way of putting it of my own, the Biblical thing to do is to disagree with some of the things we find in the Bible.

Brown covers many topics, including images of God, but perhaps writes most powerfully when he defines sin as the violation of the two most important commandments according to the teaching of Jesus: Love for God and neighbor. On this basis, Brown condemns as sinful many common facets of American morality, from extolling love as a virtue unless it is between people of the same gender, to having a salary 300 times the average of one's employees. It has been common for liberals and progressives to avoid the language of "sin". But if progressive Christians wish to speak with the power of the Christian witness against injustice and various forms of evil, the basis is rightly identified in the principle of love, which historically has been applied in varied ways in varied contexts.

There is much that is thought provoking about theology and about politics in this rather short book of a mere 124 pages. For those interested in exploring a vision of Christianity (not the only vision by any means) that differs from what one tends to encounter among conservatives, this book offers a great opportunity to do so.

Welcome Hullabaloo Visitors!

Digby at Hullabaloo picked up on the "Evolution and Indoctrination" post from Mike the Mad Biologist, and has sent hundreds of visitors over here to my blog. He even went further than that and ordained me! Does anyone know the appropriate blog etiquette for such situations? Should I return the favor and refer to him as Rev. Digby?

At any rate, welcome to all of you who are visiting from Hullabaloo. But just so you know, I'm not a "Rev", just a "Doc" and a "Prof"...

There are a lot of posts relating to evolution, creationism, intelligent design, and such topics, and many more like the one that brought you here which critique pseudoscience and its peddlers from a Christian perspective. I hope you enjoy your visit. Do come again!

Divergent Birth?

Apologies for the pun in the title, but it seemed the best way to sum up the theme of today's installment in my Sunday school class. After a brief introduction of how historical study works, we compared the geographical movements and time frames in the infancy narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

In Matthew, unless one knew otherwise before reading the text, one would assume that the hometown of Jesus' family was Bethlehem, the first geographical setting mentioned. It is hinted that Jesus may be up to 2 years old, since Herod, after inquiring when the star appeared, gave orders for all males two years old and under to be killed. At the very least, Jesus does not seem to have been a newborn. The family is found in a house.

They flee to Egypt, and particularly striking is what happens after that. After Herod's death, they want to return to Judea, and only head for Nazareth in Galilee because they are afraid of Archelaus, Herod's son who ruled over Judea after his death. Going home for Joseph in this Gospel thus meant returning to Bethlehem.

In Luke, the impression given is very different. The family lives in Nazareth, and only go up to Bethlehem for the census. If we ask how long they stayed there, we have a firm basis to draw a conclusion about that. They go up to Jerusalem to take care of Mary's purification, as specified in Leviticus 12. They were thus in Bethlehem for little more than a month after Jesus was born. We're told that once they completed everything required by the Law, after making a very public appearance in the capital of Judea (which it would be hard to imagine them doing in Matthew's Gospel) they return to Nazareth.

The impression given and the historical details seem irreconcilable to someone approaching the text asking historical questions (even without bringing in outside considerations about the census under Quirinius). But while this may raise problems for those arguing to inerrancy as popularly understood, such situations can be good news for historians, since they suggest that the two authors did not collude with one another. It certainly makes clear that the later church did not conspire to assemble a canon that spoke with a single unified voice, reflecting the aims of Constantine or some other authority.

A discussion ensued of how Christians might make sense of these aspects of the Biblical writings. Next week we'll look at some of the theological content of the stories, including themes and motifs such as the genealogies and the fulfillment of Scripture in Matthew.

Mike the Mad on McGrath

Mike the Mad Biologist has quoted my post on "Evolution and Indoctrination" at length over on his blog. Those interested in the subject may want to take a look at what happens when that post from here gets transferred into the world of ScienceBlogs. No discussion as yet (maybe you'd like to start some...).

The View From The Center Of The Universe

Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams have accomplished something important, and indeed rather remarkable, in their book The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos (New York: Riverhead/Penguin, 2006). They seek to offer nothing less than the route to a mythology for our age, one that embraces all of our best scientific knowledge, without understanding it to imply the insignificance of human beings, all the while recognizing that the myths that always fare best are those that draw from the wellsprings of stories and language that human beings already have in place and already find familiar and inspiring.

Here are some quotes and highlights from the book, which progresses through various perspectives and conclusions of the natural sciences, and explores them in relation to religion, ethics, and humanity's place in the universe in general:

"Traditional religious stories can still arouse a sense of contact with something greater than we are - but that 'something' is nothing like what is really out there. We don't have to pretend to live in some traditional picture of the universe just to reap the benefits of the mythic language popularly associated with that traditional picture...Mythic language is not the possession of any specific religion but is a human tool, and we need it today to talk about the meaning of our universe" (p.11).

"When applied to aspects of the universe far beyond the ordinary conditions on Earth, almost every word is a metaphor. Science is both a consumer and creator of metaphors and is meaningless without thousands of them" (p.15).

The book argues that there are important respects in which we need to reverse the connotations of two key concepts if we are to do justice to modern cosmology. "Myth" must regain a positive sense, while "common sense" must be demoted as not a reliable guide to the nature of reality (pp.15-16). A key reason is pointed to in the fact that miniatures versions and scale models never work precisely as their actual size counterparts (pp.30-31).

One of the most interesting features of the book is a critique of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (pp.23-25), which gives a misleading impression of how science works. Modern science is not in the same situation as during the Copernican revolution, which is the focus of Kuhn's book. We have far more data, and the ways in which science makes progress today are not the same.

In a similar way, the "Cartesian bargain" that divided the world into the natural/physical and the spiritual as separate compartments was a brief and problematic hiccup in the history of human thought, a result of the partial understanding of the Newtonian era (pp.78-79).

A nice analogy is made between food and spice on the one hand, and cosmology and myth on the other (p.85). Mythic ideas add spice to our existence, but no amount of spice can make up for the absense of food. We need to find ways of embracing our best understanding of the nature of reality, without understanding this to either exclude the legitimacy and significance of the mythical, or demote human beings as insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Extensive attention is given to the significance in the universe of small quantities of highly visible matter, but also the importance of larger amounts of largely invisible aspects of the universe. A quote is given from Alan Dressler's book Voyage to the Great Attractor (Knopf, 1994, p.335; quoted p.120): "If we could learn to look at the universe with eyes that are blind to power and size, but keen for subtlety and complexity, then our world would outshine a galaxy of stars".

The range of size scales of the universe is depicted as a cosmic Uroboros (see diagram p.160), and (as far as we can discern) our sort of existence, the scale of intelligent life, occupies a midway point between the largest and smallest - which may in fact themselves connect up in a grand unified theory (pp.161, 174-175). The term Midgard is used to refer to this middle existence of ours.

Other fascinating subjects are explored, such as Kabbalistic ideas of creation, and the possibility that different cosmological models (such as Big Bang, cyclical and steady state) may all be correct in relation to some particular scale.

After exploring both modern science and points of intersection and divergence in relation to traditional religious ideas, the authors invite us to "take our extraordinary place in the cosmos". They write (p.269): "Cosmic perspective is the greatest gift that modern cosmology gives us. It reveals that the Big Bang powers us all, galaxies and humans alike, in different ways on our respective size-scales. Every one of us is entitled to say, "I am what the expanding universe is doing here and now." Yet this gift of perspective is not so easy to integrate into daily life. Most people's cosmic imagery is left over from earlier notions of the universe - the flat earth of the Bible, the heavenly spheres of medieval Europe, or the endless emptiness of Newton's meaningless universe. We don't live in those universes. There is real dissonance between the colorful, volatile, science-expanded world we actually inhabit and the monotonously recycled language that religions use to describe "ultimate reality." Anything described in tired metaphors from an admittedly unreal world must inevitably be accompanied by doubts and eventually boredom and indifference. The lack of a meaningful universe is a modern mental handicap."

Having previously stated that the idea of our centrality in the universe is "psychologically correct" even if astronomically wrong (p.133), the authors clarify our extraordinary place in the universe (p.272): "We are at the center of the principles that uphold the universe, and our generation is the first to know it." Emphasizing that there is nothing in our scientific understanding of the universe itself that requires the view that our existence is or is not meaningful, the authors explain the importance of believing that it is indeed meaningful: "if we resign ourselves to being some minor trash in the universe, we will never see what the universe looks like, because that can only be seen with the mind's eye, and the mind's eye works from metaphors that are inaccessible to people who hold the humans-as-trash assumption" (p.274). The point is illustrated slightly later with the joke that "romantics are made of stardust, but cynics are made of the nuclear waste of worn-out stars" (p.279).

On pp.276-277 there is a helpful exploration of what "God" means in relation to our expanding understanding of the universe. On pp.284-286 there is a similar rethinking of transcendence and the spiritual along similar lines.

This is a fascinating book which offers helpful information, pertinent questions and avenues of reflection, and on the whole a wealth of resources for those seeking to relate religion to our best scientific understanding of the universe of which we are a part. I hope it will help others discover their extraordinary place in the cosmos.

Illiterate Authors?

Today I started reading Bridget Gilfillan Upton's book Hearing Mark's Endings (Leiden: Brill, 2006). It connects up both with my interest in the end of Mark and in oral tradition.

At one point she writes the following about the author of the Gospel of Mark: "That the evangelist could read and writer Greek suggests that he had received at least a primary education, and therefore must have come from a background which offered him a certain level of privilege" (p.10).

As I read those words, I almost immediately wondered whether such an assumption is justified. We know that Paul's letters were composed by Paul but not, as a rule at least, written by him. Perhaps merely on the basis of the content and style, we could draw conclusions about Paul's literacy. However, Mark's Gospel is characterized by features typical of oral storytelling. Is it not a genuine possibility that its author was only fluent as a composer and teller of orally-transmitted materials, and in order to compose a book, needed to employ a scribe?

On what basis might we conclude that an "author" in the ancient world could read and/or write? Does anyone know of a clear instance of an illiterate author, ancient or modern?

A Vast Improvement

I'm grateful to David Ker for giving an extreme makeover to my book cover over at Lingamish...

Anyone who doesn't like the one I came up with is invited to print David's and paste it on. I won't be offended, honest!

Judging a Book by its Cover

I've posted a larger image of the book's cover over on The Burial of Jesus blog. I'm posting it here as well. I've hopefully gained a new respect for the difficult work cover designers do, if nothing else, through the process of making my own covers!

If there is a next time that I publish a book through a similar process, I plan to get feedback on a range of possible designs before proceeding. In this case, however, this is a book that was already written, and since I have two conference papers and a book chapter to finish between now and November, and a sabbatical this Spring when I want to be focused on other projects, it seemed the right thing to do to go ahead and publish this now, and move the process along as quickly as possible before we get too far into the semester.

Many thanks to all who, in spite of my less than excellent taste when it comes to designing book covers, have expressed an interest in reading the book nonetheless. And I hope that what I've done with it will prove acceptable to Doug Chaplin, who kindly allowed me to use a photo he took of a Jewish tomb, and which I think works well as a book cover.

Music Archive

I've highlighted the wonderful resource that is http://www.archive.org/ before on this blog. But today I took a look to see what was there related not to my scholarly research interests, but to the music I love.

I found a book about one of my favorite composers, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, as well as the score for one of his operas, Die Tote Stadt. Books written by Arnold Bax as well as the sheet music for his Second Sonata. Scores to works by Gustav Holst (unfortunately not including "The Hymn of Jesus", which I hope to get my "Heresy" class to listen to, as well as perhaps the setting of three of the Odes of Solomon by Alan Hovhaness). If you search for the keyword "Hovhaness" on archive.org you won't find those particular songs, but there is streaming audio of interviews with the composer and a concert.

Alas, there was nothing at archive.org related to Kurt Atterberg...but no resource can be perfect! :-)

Amazon Connect

In preparation for the release of my forthcoming books, I've set up an Amazon Connect Profile for myself. In addition to syndicating my blog's RSS feed and highlighting books I've written, it also collects in one place reviews I've written.

Particularly striking was seeing whether or not readers found my combined review of books Francisco Ayala and Michael Behe helpful. Readers of Ayala liked my review; readers of Behe did not. No real surprise there...

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Outside the Box has a post on the problem of death, disease, starvation, animals eating one another, and other such facets of the natural world that drive evolution. Can such a process be viewed as the work of a benevolent God?

Here's what I wrote in response to his post (I also left it as a comment on that blog):

It is not simply evolution that poses this problem. The fact that countless organisms starved to death, were eaten by other animals, and so on may be a key part of the mechanism of evolutionary development, but the mechanism is clearly there all around us, visible and undeniable, regardless of whether one accepts evolution or not. So denying that something good came of all this through evolution doesn't really mitigate the problem, and may make it worse.

Of course, young-earth creationists would claim that God gave T-Rex teeth and made harmful viruses and bacteria at the fall as a punishment. But once again (ignoring for a moment the other reasons why such a viewpoint is problematic), I have to ask whether that claim, rather than these being natural products of a world that is capable of giving rise to intelligent life, really helps lessen the problematic character of what we find in nature.

Another Flyer

Here's a link to another flyer for The Burial of Jesus, highlighting some of what I think are the more interesting topics discussed and conclusions drawn in the book. I wasn't sure if it sounded too "sensationalistic" for this flyer to be useful in promoting the book to academic libraries.

I also learned that there are hundreds of people who hate the Papyrus font. They even have a Facebook group. Do many people reading this blog feel the same way? What other fonts are the object of similar hatred?!

I hate to think that there are hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of potential readers who will look at the book's cover, shudder when they see the font, and turn away...

Book Progress

My book The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith is close to being finalized, and hopefully will be available within a few weeks from BookSurge.

Today I made a first attempt at making a flyer for use when promoting the book. I'd welcome feedback and suggestions about ways to improve it. You can download it from this link.

I was glad to see that British television seems to be doing its part to keep interest in the subject alive until I can get my book into print! :-)

Just to give fair warning, it is my hope that enthusiastic readers of this blog will do me a favor. No, I'm not asking you to buy the book yourselves (although I obviously have no objection to your doing so!). What I really hope some of you might do is suggest the book for purchase at your local public and/or university library. That will lead to more purchases and a wider readership. Think about it.

I'll let you know when the book is available.

I've also created a blog dedicated to promoting and discussing the book once it comes out. I'll be glad to finally have this book in print, so that in the Spring, when I'll have my first ever sabbatical, I can devote myself to other projects.

4400 Episodes

Some fans of The 4400, like fans more generally, would have liked the show to go on forever, eventually dying a languishing and humiliating death as it runs out of steam.

I just watched the end of season 4, the final season of The 4400, and I think it was a satisfying, appropriately dignified way for the show to end. In one sense, I prefer this end in its prime to its becoming a soap opera, or going on the way the X-Files did, losing its major characters and plot lines and yet still bulldozing ahead on its momentum.

This doesn't mean that there couldn't be a sequel, a spin-off. But to continue under the name "The 4400" when the story has come to be about a whole city that is populated by increasing numbers of people who are promicin positive and have developed remarkable abilities. Such a show could explore fascinating and important subjects, like whether having remarkable gifts is enough to make a person tend towards good and evil, the prejudices the gifted and the not-so-gifted have towards one another, and what it would be like if those breaking and those enforcing the law all have seemingly supernatural abilities.

There is an obvious name for the such a show: "Promise City".

Sharing Powerpoints

I've had requests from students in the past, asking me to make my powerpoint presentations available to them. But this is the first semester that I'm seriously considering doing so. I wonder whether other educators and students who read this blog have feelings about and experiences related to this subject that they might be willing to share. On the one hand, I'd love to have students listen and interact rather than frantically scribble down notes during class periods. On the other hand, I've shared powerpoint content with colleagues and they have shared theirs with me, and I've often included (hopefully) amusing elements and pop culture references that will make no sense if removed from the context of their use in class. Any thoughts?

If Jesus Came Today, He Wouldn't Be a Christian

The title of this post isn't a statement by me, but the title of a song, if you can believe it, by a band called Obadiah and the Minor Prophets:

The lyrics are really interesting:

I love Jesus
And Jesus loves me
I know all about him
Because I’ve got a PhD
Studying Religion and Church History
And the development of Christology
From its pre-Christian origins
To the Council of Chalcedon
In 451 - Yeah!

If I could make a machine
To travel back in time
I’d go to the first century
And live in Palestine
I could talk to John the Baptist
And Rabbi Hanina Ben Dosa
I’d find St Paul
And punch him in the head
Then I’d talk to Jesus
And listen to everything he said - Yeah!

I’m sure that Jesus
Must be turning in his grave
When he sees those
Who are preaching in his name
If Jesus came today he wouldn’t be a Christian
No, he’d probably be a liberal Jew
That’s why I don’t want to be a Christian
Just a follower of Jesus
… Or maybe just a Buddhist - Yeah!

You can download other music by Jeff Simonds from his web site.

We've all presumably encountered the point of view that Jeff sings about in the song, but this is the first time I've heard someone sing about it. Gretta Vosper, in her book expressing her own Christian viewpoint, she mentions the issue of progressive Christians who think differently than conservative and fundamentalist Christians on a large number of issues, but then sing the same songs. I wonder whether this marks a turning point...

(HT NT Wrong)

The Clone Wars: Teaching as Learning

Today I saw Star Wars: The Clone Wars with my son, at a matinee showing. We were the only ones there. I am not sure whether that has to do with the nice weather or the at best lukewarm reviews the animated film has received, but I was surprised.

The movie is movie certainly has as much of the adventure and depth of story that any other Star Wars film, special, animated series or other installment has had. It also has the same things that have annoyed so many adult viewers (Please don't get me started on Jabba the Hut's uncle who lived on Coruscant and speaks English with a Southern accent).

But the movie has an element that is genuinely new and interesting: Anakin Skywalker gets his own Padawan apprentice, an unusually young one named Ahsoka. Anakin, having been promoted not that long before to the rank of Jedi Knight, had not yet been assigned a Padawan learner, and said himself he was perfectly happy not to have one. But as the story unfolds, he starts to warm to this rather rash and impetuous young Jedi in the making.

There is nothing that teaches us like trying to teach others. Any educator will tell you that you learn more from teaching a course on a subject than you do by taking that same course.

It is when we try to teach others, especially those younger than we are, that we realize what we were like and the difficulties we posed for our own teachers.

There are things we learn from this experience that probably cannot be learned in any other way.

So sit back, enjoy the amusing banter from the battle droids, and think about what sort of child, what sort of student, what sort of adult and what sort of teacher you have been, are, and/or are becoming.

The Clone War provides a great opportunity to reflect on why much of the way we proceed in debates and discussions, not just in classrooms but in every sort of situation, often ignores a crucial element, to our detriment and that of our conversation partners.

If someone had spoken to us the way we speak to others, when we were younger, or when we had thought differently, would we have listened?

A movie called "Clone Wars" is particularly apt for exploring this subject, since when we seek to pass on the wisdom we've gained over the years, we find ourselves wrestling with younger versions of ourselves.

Christian Fundamentalism Views Revelation as a Mean Joke

According to the majority of Christian fundamentalists, the Book of Revelation is about the future (perhaps distant, perhaps near and already begun). Our future, that is, and not merely the future from the perspective of the time in which it was written.

Yet they appear not to have thought through the implications of treating the book in this way, or have ignored substantial parts of the Book of Revelation itself.

If the fundamentalist approach (typically what is in technical terms known as "premillenialism" and often "premillenial dispensationalism") is correct, then we'd have to imagine the following as a plausible exchange between the book's author and its original readers:

Reader: "Hey John, remember that book you sent us a while back?"

John: "The Book of Revelation? What about it?"

Reader: "Well, you said that if we are wise (and of course, we all seek to be) we should calculate the number of the beast, because it is a human being's number."

John (apprehensively): "Yeah, I know. I wrote that in chapter 13 verse 18" (wink).

Reader: "Well I'm a bit confused. One manuscript I read has 666 which I figured out is Caesar Nero. But a friend of mine said he knows someone who read a version that has 616, and that could fit emperor Gaius "Caligula" as well as Nero. Which is it?"

John: "You're both wrong. It refers to Barack Obama."

Reader: "Who?!"

John: "He's going to be a presidential candidate in almost 2,000 years' time in a country that doesn't exist yet, on a continent no one on this continent knows exists at the moment".

Reader: "What?! How did you expect us to figure that out?"

John (rolling on the floor laughing): "Just because I told you wisdom was to figure it out, you thought I meant you actually could? Ha! Suckers!"

What is most irritating is that fundamentalists are happy to make God, the authors of Scripture, and anyone else be mean, immoral and dishonest in order for the Bible (or more accurately their interpretation of it) somehow in spite of this be perfectly inerrant.

Am I the only one who sees a problem here? Is it plausible to view the Book of Revelation as a mean practical joke played by a genuine prophet on his unsuspecting Christian victims?