A friend of mine has posed a question to me: If someone, namely a nonbeliever more interested in an academic approach, has made the decision to read the whole Bible, what translation should that someone read ( Read more... )

Going to AAR-SW today! Baby's First Conference! So exciting ( Read more... )

I want to preserve a couple of tweets I made this morning, and then I want to talk about this some more, because as much as I try to bite my tongue about it, it keeps bubbling up -- and I remain steadfastly convinced that Twitter is a shit-awful place to talk out anything:
I'm sure the No True Scotsman Atheists are all over Twitter this morning, ( Read more... )

Went to see the Left Behind movie today. Here is what I can tell you about going to see it:

1. Don't.
2. If you do, try to do it in a theater of people who won't be mad when you giggle at inappropriate times.

I failed on both of those points ( Read more... )

This letter was sent to the Germantown Mennonite Church by a disgruntled visitor. I found it in the archives yesterday and I had to reproduce it. I typed it up and sent it to their current pastor, who probably had no idea it was tucked away in there between the finance reports and mission statements.

( Read more... )

For one of my exams, I have to relate the theory I've got here to one of the primary documents I'll be looking at, and the best way to make myself close-read it is to type it up.

( here it is )

So let me tell you about the Donatists ( Read more... )

Behold, the worst extended metaphor in the world to explain syncretism:

ladysisyphus: Okay, so there's a steak restaurant and a candy store.
ladysisyphus: If you go to the steak restaurant and the candy store, you have just ... gone to both.
ladysisyphus: But! If you decide that what the world really needs is a steak-and-candy store, and you start your own, that's syncretism.
relvetica: ( Read more... )

Jesus at Occupy Wall Street: ‘I feel like I’ve been here before’On a very related note, Tuesday's lecture in my Hebrew Bible class was on the eighth-century prophets: Amos, Hosea, (first) Isaiah, and Micah. For a little background: we're talking the 8th century BCE here, during which time the Assyrians conquered the very wealthy and well-off ( Read more... )

Now that my classes that I'm teaching are underway, I feel I have a good enough sense of them to report!

Intro to Bible: I could teach this class kind of with my eyes closed now, which is good, because it's taken a lot of effort to get to that point, and I feel good that my hard work has paid off for me in terms of effort -- which is to say, I'll ( Read more... )