I have been thinking, as is my wont, about giving thanks, on this Thanksgiving.   Many of my thoughts have been about all the things I am so incredibly thankful for, as is appropriate for the day.  But another line of thinking has hit me as well, involving the ironies of giving thanks. Some background, from my personal life.  As much as I love my live, the older I get, the more I realize just how weird this of mine life has been, as a scholar of religion who is not himself religious, an expert on Jesus and the New Testament who does not believe in Jesus or the New Testament, an academic obsessed with the history of Christianity who is not personally connected with Christianity.   As many of you know, the weirdness in part comes from the fact that when I started out I was completely committed religiously, as a believer in Jesus, the Bible, and all things Christian.   When I was seventeen, I was not just your run-of-the-mill-go-to-church-on-Sunday kind of Christian.  I was a [...]