CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

Mark Goodacre has pointed out that the long lost and much missed blog Apocryphicity has in fact been continuing its existence at a new location.

When I went to pay a visit, I was immediately struck to find a recent post entitled "Prayer of John the Baptist." Tony gives a longer and shorter version of the prayer that he came across in Syriac sources:

Longer version:

Now, the first prayer of John to his disciples: “Father, show me your son. Son, show me your spirit. Holy Spirit grant me wisdom through your strength.” And some say it is this: “Holy Father, consecrate me through your strength and make known the glory of your excellence and show me your son and fill me with your spirit which has received light through your knowledge."

Shorter version:

The first prayer of St. John the Baptist to his disciples: "Holy Father, guard your strength and show us your glory and make your son known to us and fill us, my Lord, with your spirit which gives light through your knowledge."My interest was piqued not merely because of a general interest in John the Baptist because of my work on the Mandaeans, but because there is in fact an unpublished manuscript in the Drower Collection in the Bodleian Library in Oxford entitled the "Prayers of John." It will be interesting to see whether there is any evidence in them of interaction between Mandaeans and the Syriac-speaking Christians that composed and preserved the above prayer (and others like it).

Tony also shared Serapion's "Life of John the Baptist" on his web site. Thanks!

When I looked to see if I could find the DC number of the "Prayers of John" in the Drower Collection, I happened across a German dissertation by Gabriele Mayer which is a commentary on chapters 18-33 of the Drasha d-Yahia - The Mandaean Book of John! I was particularly delighted to see that this dissertation devotes some attention to the poetic character and structure of the text.

I only discovered this dissertation moments ago, and so I cannot say more yet, but I'm delighted to have found it!

I've been thinking about an assignment idea for a freshman class. Has anyone ever given students an assignment that asks them to plagiarize? I'm seriously thinking about it, although I'm also conscious of some potential pitfalls and issues.

My thinking is that students could get the following out of an assignment of this sort:

1. Students who are unclear on the concept of plagiarism will need to learn what it is in order to complete the assignment.
2. Students who think plagiarism is easy will discover how easy it is to get caught.
3. Students will have an opportunity to compare how much time an assignment took in order to plagiarize and try to cover their tracks, vs. actually doing an assignment in an acceptable, plagiarism-free manner, as well as to compare how much they feel they learned and/or how much they actually recall from two comparable assignments, one plagiarized, the other required to be plagiarism free.

What do others think? Is anyone aware of something like this having been done before? If so, how did it go? If not, what do you think of the idea?

In the video below, Ken Miller, the renowned Roman Catholic biologist, explains one example of evidence for evolution, and ends with a theological point about why he rejects Intelligent Design:


HT Hemant Mehta

Not everyone has the time or skill necessary to make Italian tomato sauce from scratch. Most of us eat sauce from a jar most of the time. But you can certainly improve even store-bought sauce with relatively little effort. Grow your own basil in your garden, or if necessary in a pot or box on a window sill. Add fresh basil to your sauce from a jar, and you'll be amazed at how much it improves the flavor - and thus your dining experience.

I think that our worldviews have a lot in common with this. I don't think anyone can ever put together a worldview entirely from scratch. But few of us have the time or skill even to put together our view on a particular subject from scratch. And as in cooking, what "from scratch" means is debatable. Do you have to grow your own tomatoes? Can you say you researched a subject yourself when you are dependent on "data in a can"?

Nevertheless, everyone should try to broaden their experience from "faith in a jar" - by which I mean a viewpoint, whether it is belief in God, or belief that you are skeptical enough to know there is no God, or anything else, which you have largely taken over in its details from other people, whether they be family, friends, or people on the internet whom you hardly know. Take some detail about which you have nagging doubts or puzzling unanswered questions, and take the time to slow cook your own viewpoint. Don't take any shortcuts. Don't even rely too much on someone else's "recipe."
You may never have the time to cook your own perspective entirely from scratch. Let's be honest: no one does. But you can add some fresh ingredients. And what you'll discover as a result is perhaps more important than being able to cook your own sauce, or faith, from home-grown raw ingredients. You'll find out from your own experience that jarred faith, like jarred sauce, is something you settle for. It provides convenience at the expense of taste. It sacrifices richness and authenticity for expediency.

Few if any of us can ever attain a "fully farm fresh faith." But I like to think that everyone can expand their horizons by adding a few fresh ingredients. Because if nothing else, you'll realize as a result of doing so that the arguments you've been having about which jarred worldview is better are missing a much bigger picture. You may have both been arguing over the difference between two mass-produced imitations, without ever having tasted anything close to the "real thing."

Buon appetito!

Jim West has taken it upon himself to revive the languishing tradition of the Biblical Studies Carnival, and asks for posts to be submitted, particularly ones related to Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.

I hope that Jesus: The Video Game will be included...

Chad at the Political Jesus blog is reading, and has started a blog series reviewing, James Dunn's book Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?: The New Testament Evidence

Jen McCreight posted this map of the U.S. indicating an important point about science standards in each state (via Why Evolution Is True). I'm happy to say that Indiana is one of the few states that explicitly mentions evolution in its biology standards - but dismayed that most states have omitted all reference to this extremely important area of knowledge about the natural world and about ourselves.

I've been trying some new templates, layouts, color schemes and other style modifications on the blog. The header is now more "Matrixesque" than it was.

I thought about putting a LOST background behind the blog title, but having given the blog a title which mentions the Matrix, it seems appropriate to stick with it, however much that leads to the blog having a distinctively "retro" feel.

Of course, one of the themes of the Matrix movie series was that the world that humans think of as the "real world" was itself "retro" and yet no one knew they were really living in the future. So there's something to think about, if you want to ponder a possible deeper meaning to these stylistic tinkerings by the "Architect"...

Well, after several attempts at importing the comments from Blogger into Disqus, I've returned to Blogger's built-in comment feature. The transition seems to have kept all previous comments, including those made in Disqus, and so hopefully we can carry on our conversations uninterrupted. Sorry for the confusion, if there was any!

Larry Hurtado has shared a review he wrote of James Dunn's recent book, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?: The New Testament Evidence. The review is to be published in the Journal of Theological Studies and can be downloaded from the Essays etc. section of Hurtado's web site.

I've only had a chance to skim the review, and so I may have more to say about it once I've read it more closely. But I wanted to share it immediately, since it will definitely be of interest to anyone who shares the interest in monotheism, Christology and worship that Dunn, Hurtado and I have in common!

The Disqus comments feature is now working. But the process of transferring older comments into the system will take longer, as I had to restart the process. But it seems to be working! Feel free to comment on this post and any subsequent ones for now, and hopefully comments on older posts will reappear soon.

We're still waiting for Disqus to finish the switch-over process. I'm still hoping this works. Presumably if you are reading this, then you are too. In the mean time, if you have something you really need to say, there's always Facebook and Twitter...

At the recommendation of a number of other bloggers, I'm going to try transitioning to Disqus comments. (Apologies to anyone who saw my previous post about this in a reader and tried to click through to it, as I subsequently deleted it). Apparently the process of transferring over takes a little while, and so hopefully in the near future comments will reappear and new comment and discussion options will be available.

Unfortunately this means you may have to wait a few hours before you can tell me how much you loathe the changes I've made to the blog's appearance...

Take a look at this hilarious parody of the well-known recent Old Spice commercial, made by Harold B. Lee Library. Fantastic! I think I'll show it to my classes when I talk about library use.



HT Scott Pfitzinger on Facebook

Those reading this blog from its URL may have noticed my tampering with the blog's design, but readers subscribed to the RSS feed may not. Please do take a look at the blog directly and let me know what you think of the current format, and feel free to make suggestions (understanding that I'm under no obligation to apply them!).

One reason for doing this is that the previous format didn't allow the new share buttons to appear. And so please do pick a post that you have enjoyed and share it on Facebook, Twitter, or somewhere else, now that it is so much easier to do so. Thanks!

Paul N. Anderson has published an article at The Bible and Interpretation entitled "A Fourth Quest for Jesus…So What, and How So?" It argues for a rethinking of the way we pursue historical study of Jesus so as to include more of the evidence from the Gospel of John.

As a participant in the "John, Jesus and History" project which Paul has organized, I must confess that I disagree with Paul on this particular issue. On the one hand, when it comes to chronological and a number of other such issues, there seems to be a willingness to take John's witness seriously as an independent perspective. So too when John confirms information from other sources.

But on the other hand, it is not merely the differences between John and the Synoptics that are the reason why historians do not accept the historicity of the words the Gospel of John places on the lips of Jesus. It has much more to do with the internal stylistic consistency of the Fourth Gospel. The narrator, Jesus, and John the Baptist all speak with the same distinctive style and vocabulary. This, when coupled with the fact that the unique Johannine terminology gives expression to a number of ideas unique to John among the New Testament Gospels, such as that Jesus was aware of having pre-existed in heaven before appearing on earth, it seems that historians are absolutely correct to reject the authenticity of most of what the Johannine Jesus is depicted as saying. This doesn't seem to me to be a case of undue skepticism, but of an appropriately critical approach to history. 

Other bloggers who have mentioned Paul's article include Jim West, Darrell Pursiful, and Ari. What do others think about this issue, and of the new and altered criteria Paul mentions in his article?

Gabriel McKee has posted a round-up of this season of blogging about Doctor Who at Religion Dispatches, with links to all the entries. The final installment appeared here, and starts with my own contribution, entitled "The Big Bang, Take Two."The title of the complete entry on the finale is "Rebooting the Universe: Doctor Who part X, Season Finale" and it includes Gabriel's contribution as well.

In related news, Jim Davila shared a link about a forthcoming book on the subject of Jewish science fiction.

Blogger is adding yet another new feature - share buttons added to the bottom of posts. I'll be switching that feature on and see what happens. It doesn't look like it has been activated yet, and when it is, I don't know that such buttons will be added to older posts. But it is still yet another useful feature. Thanks Blogger!

I just saw the movie Creation, featuring Paul Bettany as an incredibly persuasive Charles Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as his wife Emma, as well as a host of other excellent actors.

The movie is not focused on his famous theory, although it is inevitably there in the background and at the margins of the story throughout. But at center stage, however, is the death of a child, the loss of faith, marital relationships, and the struggle of an entire family through the sort of tragedy that is itself a key component of evolutionary theory.

I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Steve Caruso for pointing out that the Mandaeans were in the news today, in an article covering their dwindling numbers in Iraq as persecution leads to their increased scattering to other parts of the world.