The Texas Tribune recently offered a pointed comparison-contrast to Tim Dunn's political-religious quasi theocratic compound just down the road, by profiling Connection Christian Church in O… Read More

 Now, I'm not a former music critic of the New York Times, unlike Joseph Horowitz, but when I was a Dallas Symphony Orchestra season-ticket holder years ago, I regularly converse… Read More

 The LSD Church continues to claim it is, but religious sociology surveys, per the Religious News Service, paint a massively different picture, with the gap between Mormons' own… Read More

Rome loves to talk about how it will "follow the science" on something like evolution by natural selection (with a theistic evolution carve-out for us humans, of course).It doesn't always.En… Read More

 At Aeon, John Lefebvre has a paean to Rawls, apparently an extract from his new book "Liberalism is a Way of Life," which is mentioned and linked in the tagline for the author at top l… Read More

 I have been hitting a string of cropper and semi-cropper books in touted new philosophy books recently. (Sorry, Little Bobby Sapolsky and determinist fanbois, "Determined" is not a phi… Read More

A couple of weeks ago, while on vacation, I was hiking the Grove of Titans trail at Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park. I was coming back to the trailhead, when a young lady, I'm guessing… Read More

 No, contra ZanillaMilla in this post, "Saul" was not a Greek signum, then Paul a Roman cognomen he later switched to, namely because Paul wasn't a Roman citizen, as I told Naugrith the… Read More

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was a HARD book to rate, and so, as I’ve done once or tw… Read More

I spun this out of the first of two recent posts about the thoughts, presumably wrong thoughts, of "independent biblical researcher" (you don't get the s-word) Chris(sy) Hansen, who I only r… Read More

 I'm not sure if I did a first quarter roundup or not.Anyway, here goes.Not all of these were posted in the past three months, but all of them are the top 10 reads of April-June.No. 10?… Read More

An interesting story in Texas Monthly about state attorney general Ken Paxton vs El Paso's Annunciation House as a migrants' refuge. But, the "quarter of the state" following Catholic tea… Read More

 I may not quite be done with responding to stupidity at r/AcademicBiblical, as the Marcion fellation continues there.A post there last month had a commenter link to Markus Vinzent's "M… Read More

When I got in discussion with Nero biographer John Drinkwater about Nero, I eventually wrote a follow-up piece, suggesting that odds were 60 percent this was an interpolation by Sulpicius Se… Read More

This is a moderately expanded Goodreads review, that may get expanded more economically and posted on my main blog as well. The nature of the header will be clear soon enough in the review.T… Read More

A VERY interesting comment on r/AcademicBiblical, that, if one strips away legendary interpretations of 1 Clement, Peter and Paul may indeed have faced that.Or may not. We'll get into this… Read More

 Of course, the word "alleged" is nowhere in the CBS News story about the discovery of the oldest manuscript fragment of The Infancy Gospel of Thomas. (Without the "alleged" or similar… Read More

 Well, this one's creepy.You can live a public life, not become part of any order of nuns, but yet, get an official consecration as a perpetual virgin.Second, it's clearly a perpetuatio… Read More

That's contra friend Skeptophilia, who posts to that end, with link to a Smithsonian piece, that in turn riffs off a letter to the editor in Clinical Chemistry.There's a LOT to unpack.First… Read More

Nor are most of the results. The AP story on this trend nails the reason why in the second paragraph: Catholic churches are "aging out" on more regular attendees in many places. Often, peopl… Read More

Strawmanning, in this piece claiming that Yahweh was originally the family/tribal god of the Omride dynasty of Israel and moved southward to Judah from there.And, stupidity in commenting, es… Read More

I posted my own RIP three weeks ago, with links to much previous blogging about Dennett, as well as links to Massimo Pigliucci's and John Horgan's takes on him.Last week, via Firefox, I saw… Read More

The idea that Marcion wrote his Evangelion before Luke, and that Luke is dependent on him rather than vice versa gets trotted out again at r/AcademicBiblical. Some of the arguments, in this… Read More

Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End by Bart D. Ehrman My rating: 1 of 5 stars With a much fuller review of this book now, I can say that each time I think that Bart Ehrman c… Read More

A new moderator removed a comment to this post by "A Casual Formality." Per a later comment that was allowed, it's clear that the OP was NOT asking a good-faith question. Whether he's a fund… Read More

The subreddit had an "ask me anything" March 7 with Bart Ehrman. I find it "interesting" that none of the reverential genuflectors there asked Bart why he went Marcionite in his latest book… Read More

Paula Fredriksen is right that Jesus was NOT a Palestinian Jew. Palestine as a Roman province did not exist until after the Second Jewish Revolt. (That said, contra some Zionists, Greek has… Read More

Per this great New Yorker piece about a sad recent trend in the classical world, many modern conductors are spread too thin. Or rather than that passive voice, they're spreading themselves t… Read More

I would normally, upon hearing the death of a figure like this, one more “pedestaled” than deserving, write up some sort of “takedown” obit. In the world of politics… Read More

Christians in the world outside of Orthodoxy (unless Zelensky got the Ukranian church to move Easter as well as Christmas) celebrated Easter March 29.Muslims had started Ramadan before that… Read More

Per a group statement, it self-imploded.Having snarked on them a last time recently, I thought I would take one last look, to see what it did, or did not, write about the climate crisis, bei… Read More

 These are the most-viewed posts of mine within the past three months. That doesn't mean all of them are from the last three months. I'll indicate where not.No. 10? More oopses at r/Aca… Read More

Some actually pretty good discussion here on its dating. The long comment by Moremon is good, though he appears to be plumping for at least the possibility of a relatively early date within… Read More

Per a group statement, plus this, this, this and this ... it self-imploded.As regular readers know, I snark semi-regularly on Reddit's AcademicBiblical subthread. I've done that here on occa… Read More

Pytine's comment and ex-Mormon's response are both "interesting," but I believe incorrect, especially no-Moremon.First, Pytine.The Cureton thesis on Ignatius is a minority view among scholar… Read More

At the Atlantic recently (workaround archive link avoids paywall) Ariel Sabar tackled anew this old question, known to biblical scholars like me (graduate theological degree, undergrad in cl… Read More

 T.J. Coles, writing for Counterpunch and riffing on his new book, "The New Atheism Hoax," has the receipts.The warmongering of original Gnu Chris Hitchens, in his slobbering over his a… Read More

 Four years ago, in one of the most popular posts here, I wrote about the etymology of the "rex," the "king," that Julius Caesar supposedly wanted to become, that got him killed.But, wh… Read More

 Shock me that this is something that, on the political side, Charles Kuffner glommed on to.A Fred Clark claims at Patheos (which I don't go to on my own since they chased the atheists… Read More

I've noted this in comments at Reddit’s trolley problem subreddit, but I decided it was time to make a post there, based on this piece at Psy Post which had just popped up in my blogro… Read More

Contra this person, and the Lester Crabbe he cites, reading between the lines, oh, yes we do have at least hints of Yehud revolting against the early years of Achaemenid Persian rule. Any go… Read More

 Written in response to a semi-challenge on Goodreads, when I snarkily responded to a friend's talk about "b&b" angles on a fairy tale and said "bed and breakfast" even as I knew it… Read More

This is an edited and expanded version of my Goodreads review of Robert Sapolsky's "Determined." It's expanded, not just because I do that at other times with some Goodreads reviews where I… Read More

Don't let anybody tell you it's fundagelical Christians vs other Christians. Not even scholar of religion Ryan Burge. Don't let him, or even more, #BlueAnon Dems, riffing on him, tell y… Read More

The Experience Machine by Andy Clark My rating: 3 of 5 stars Better than Anil Seth, but that's a low bar to clear.But, that's a good starting point for this review, which, as normal, is exte… Read More

 I don't do a monthly roundup, unlike at my main blog. But, here is a roundup of the last quarter of 2023. Again, not all of these may have been written in 2023, but they were the… Read More

 Again, not all of these may have been written in 2023, but they were the most read last year.We'll start from the bottom.At No. 10, from January 2023, me calling out a then-new moderat… Read More

 Shock me that the (currently) second-largest United Methodist church in the US is in Southlake, tilts semi-wingnut within the UMC, and has its growth being driven by Californication.&n… Read More

 NO, Yonathan Adler does NOT "over-egg it" on his magisterial new study of the origin of Jewish beliefs and praxis. (Said person is a good commenter on Aussie politics, though.)Fortunat… Read More

I love me some Paul Davidson, author of "Is That in the Bible?" (Also u/CaptainHaddock at r/AcademicBiblical. And, sigh, a mod there now, too.) But, Jonathan Poletti, the "Belover" of Medium… Read More

 This is not against the U.S. Religious Right, mainly Christian, but with a few Orthodox Jews along for the ride, and even, for political reasons, a few Muslims.This is against the Reli… Read More