Here I return to the quiz I gave my undergraduate class the first day of the term; I have been explaining why I ask the questions I do and what I would like my students to learn from them. Here now are three more of the questions
Some students may know something like the Gospel of Thomas, but, well, not many even know this one. In the course we spend most of our time, ...
Continue Reading →Very rarely do I myself find an interview that I’ve done very interesting — usually because they are often on the same topics, over and over again. And I almost *never* listen to one afterward. This one is an exception. Everyone has her or his preferences, but I really like this one.
It is also one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever done. This guy contacted me out of the blue about a new podcast he was doing. He lived in ...
Continue Reading →Looking for some fun, excitement, and a change of pace this weekend? On Saturday I will be doing an all-day seminar for the Smithsonian Associates, four lectures (two in the morning, two in the afternoon), each with Q&A to follow, on Heaven and Hell, based, of course, on the book. Interested in joining in? Ticket information, and so on, can be found here: https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/tickets/heaven-and-hell-perspectives-on-afterlife
The structure of the lectures will be different from the book. Here is the line-up of ...
Continue Reading →A while back I asked blog members to forward to me information about publications they have … published. Twice I’ve given a half dozen, and here are some more: a couple of articles and a couple of books. They all look fascinating to me, and two of them are by research scholars / professors of the New Testament that I know. Maybe one of the others is as well, that I don’t know! In any case, read through their self-descriptions, ...
Continue Reading →Here is a webinar that I did on July 29th, 2020, as the Smith-Pettit lecture for the Sunstone Digital Symposium sponsored by Sunstone Education Foundation. It was on the “History of Heaven and Hell.” It was an unusual event for me: Sunstone is an independent organization located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sunstone does not have any official ties to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but it does serve mainly them, bringing together traditional and non-traditional Latter-day ...
Continue Reading →Here now is the second guest post by Duke PhD students Ian Mills and Laura Robinson, dealing with their podcast New Testament Review. In this one they describe one of their more unusual podcasts. As you’ll see, they deal with extremely interesting material for to anyone interested real scholarship on early Christianity– as opposed to the (often very popular) books by people who don’t know or understand scholarship but try to denigrate it in order to “prove” their own sectarian ...
Continue Reading →University classes started this past week, and as so many have said, this will be a school year like no other. I will be teaching both of my classes remotely, a PhD seminar on Early Christian Apocrypha, which I will be discussing in a later post, and my undergraduate course, Jesus in Scholarship and Film. I’ve taught this latter course on and off for years now, and it is absolutely one of my favorites. The basic idea behind it is ...
Continue Reading →If you are interested in learning more about scholarship on the New Testament, but at a lay person’s level, this is the post for you! It is about a podcast that might be (probably is) right up your alley, set up and run by two graduate students from Duke University who have worked with me over the past few years.
One of the real pleasures of teaching graduate students in New Testament/early Christianity at UNC is that Duke is just ten ...
Continue Reading →I need to apologize to blog members. Yesterday I posted a link to the Christian ministry that deals with people with disabilities, and I have received a complaint that the link includes a statement of faith that forcefully condemns gay sex and gay marriage. By posting the link it may appear that I and/or the blog, concur, support, or even accept any such view. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I’m afraid I did not do due diligence by reading ...
Continue Reading →One of my biggest complaints against a lot of deeply committed evangelical Christians I know, and know about, is that they don’t live and act like Christians. They go to battle for issues not even addressed in their own Scriptures as if they were the most important things in the mind of God, and they completely ignore the moral imperatives Jesus himself did promote: active concern and love for those who are in need, whether they are of our own ...
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