Monday, June 3, 2013

Humanities and technology

Working in the trenches of humanities in face of the rise in the last decades of the internet and the overwhelming belief that knowledge is about information and data and number crunching, that everything about being human can be reduced to scientific investigation, I have been very concerned about where we are going as a people.

It is as if utilitarianism and efficiency and speed are all the driving forces behind anything we now consider most valuable.  Everything is short and sweet and public.  If it doesn't make us richer, faster, or easier, we don't want it.  We don't think it is worth pursuing.

We are becoming thin and instant like our devices.  We are remaking ourselves in the images of our devices.

We are scattering our attention.  Like our devices, we do two or three things at once.  We watch TV and check our email, giving neither full attention, while ignoring the other people in the room.  Screens intersect and offset us from others as we type away behind them.

At restaurants, in classrooms, in cars we are on the internet, uploading pictures to Facebook to get instant feedback about where we are or what we are doing.  Nothing seems to wait.  Gaming draws us in and keeps us coming back, psychologically preying on our desire for instant feedback and success. 

We mistake computer intelligence for the human mind.  We are held in the grips of our iPhones, iPads, our Facebooks, Twitters, and Texts, as if they were lifelines that plug our brains into other brains.  Some of us have become so addicted to technology that to unplug, even for a day, is traumatic.

I am not against technology.  I have a laptop, iPhone, iPad, a digital camera and all the rest.  And I love them.  What I worry about is what this is all doing to us so quickly.  What are our lives becoming?  How has it changed the way we think about things?  Interact with others?  Value things?

Where is our humanity in all this? What is happening to us spiritually and intellectually as we disengage and devalue the pursuit of knowledge which we have mistaken for information?  When we are convinced that we can reduce everything about us to scientific answers?

Leon Wieselttier gives us something to think about in his commencement address published by Republic HERE.  He argues that humanities and its pursuit has suddenly become countercultural.  Take a look.  It is worth the read.



Wednesday, May 29, 2013

David Capes' Blog

I was just on Facebook and noticed that Professor Capes of Houston Baptist University has been keeping a blog on all things religion.  Check it out HERE.http://davidbcapes.com/

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Symposium on Apocrypha

Tony Burke is holding a symposium on the Christian Apocrypha.  He writes:

"The 2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium, “Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier: The Christian Apocrypha in North American Perspectives,” will take place at York University September 26–28, 2013.

The event is organized by Tony Burke (York University) in consultation with Brent Landau (University of Oklahoma). It brings together 22 Canadian and U.S. scholars to share their work and discuss present and future collaborative projects."

For more information, go HERE.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Another woman biblioblogger

Welcome to Candida Moss, another woman biblioblogger.  Happy to see you in the bibliosphere!

Here is a link to her new blog.  Professor Moss is a New Testament specialist at Notre Dame.  She has written two books on early Christian martyrdom and other topics.

Friday, May 3, 2013

A wild thought about scripture

One of the things that has deeply struck me as I have been rereading the ancient sources like John and Paul as I am writing chapters for my book The Ancient New Age, is that our assumptions make all the difference to our understanding of what a text says. 

Now this is not a new revelation for me.  I have known this since I was an undergraduate.  But knowing it intellectually is very different from really experiencing it.  Scholars know this.  But, by and large, we don't do anything about it.  We continue to read texts as we have been trained to read them (as orthodox Christians have read them for centuries), and there is great turmoil if someone suggests otherwise. 

We assume that the orthodox Christian reading of scriptural texts is the author's intent.  We gloss and harmonize what doesn't fit.  We do it unconsciously so that the text fits our preconceived mental frames.

With the work I have been doing (some of it in cognitive studies), I have come to see that the assumption that the orthodox Christian reading of scriptural texts is the author's intent is simply wrong.  The authors of the New Testament texts were not orthodox.  They were not even proto-orthodox.  They had their own ideas, many of which were innovative, revolutionary, and wild.

What makes the text orthodox is its interpretation, one that is imposed upon it by later readers who had a stake in how the Christian tradition was unfolding.  We simply have inherited this interpretation and consider it authorial.

There was a war over these texts and their meaning, a war that continues today.  It was an early war too.  This is not about Gnosticism at the end of the second century that somehow got the interpretation of the texts all wrong.  This is about the first century.  It is about Palestine and Samaria.  It is at the root of the Christian faith. 

Paul of the letters is far removed from the author of the Pastorals who tries desperately to tame Paul's wildness, or Luther's Paul who is further excised of any charisma.  John of the Gospel is far removed from the domestication that the Elder in the Johannine letters imposed on John and later orthodox church leaders picked up and developed. 

Once I was able to dislocate myself from my orthodox training, I have come to see that both Paul and John were impacted by Gnostic spirituality.  It forms the center of their concept of the Christian faith.  Both were reacting to Judaism, which they saw as a religion that did not really know the true God or what he actually wanted.  Both preached liberation from the old forms of Servant spirituality that was the cradle of all the Near Eastern religions.  Both believed that the experience of God, the revelation of God, was what mattered, and it was to be experienced by everyone through initiation.  Both were transgressors who understood the old Jewish scriptures in ways that subverted its accepted meanings.  And on and on.

I guess what I am saying is that I think there is more work that needs to be done on Christian origins, work that demands we set aside our assumptions about orthodoxy, and come to see the wild innovative nature of the early Christian communities.


Monday, April 29, 2013

Who was Paul really?

I have been making quite a bit of good progress on The Ancient New Age book.  I just finished chapter 4 on the Gospel of John and the letters of John called "The Dark Cosmos."  It was thrilling to write this chapter and finally get down my reading of the Fourth Gospel and its Gnostic predisposition.  Yes.  I really find in the fabric of that text Gnostic spirituality merging with Jewish scriptures and nascent Christianity. It is not just later Gnostic interpretation imposed on an orthodox gospel.  It is there in the soul of the Gospel.

My next chapter is on Paul, so I am now immersed in Pauline literature and just got the chance to read James Tabor's newest book on the subject, Paul and Jesus.  The Paul that Tabor speaks about (and his relationship to the Jerusalem church and other apostles) dovetails nicely with the ways that I have come to understand Paul over the years.

I remember as a young woman really disliking Paul.  What I didn't know then is that what I disliked was not Paul but Luther's Paul.  That is when I discovered Paul the mystic.  I read Albert Schweitzer's book and then Alan Segal's book, both on Paul the mystic.  Suddenly Paul made sense to me.  But he wasn't anyone that contemporary Christians could relate to.  What he was saying was way out there.  Undomesticated.  Wild.  He was a visionary who realized union with Christ whom he saw as the manifestation of God.  He developed rituals that helped democratize this experience so that all converts could similarly be united.

One of the features that I really like about Tabor's book is that he starts from the position that Paul was a mystic.  Tabor then breaks down Paul's message into five understandable chunks.  This makes Paul the mystic more accessible rather than wild.  Tabor's book is written around these chunks:
  • The resurrection body is a new spiritual body that believers attain.
  • Baptism gives the believer the Christ/Holy Spirit with unites with his/her own spirit and makes him/her a child of God, part of a new genus of Spirit-beings who will inherit God's Kingdom.
  • The believer achieves a mystical union with Christ due to this Spirit infusion, a gradual process that is transformative involving also the sacred meal where Christ is taken within as food.
  • The world is in the last throes of its existence, and life would soon be transformed. 
  • Paul turned his back on the Torah and abandoned Judaism, replacing it with the new Torah of Christ.
Of course as I am thinking about Paul the mystic, I am also wondering about Paul the Gnostic.  Have we worked so hard over the centuries to domesticate Paul that we have lost touch with his Gnostic aspects too, like with the Fourth Gospel?  Anyway, these are my thoughts right now as I am in the reading and thinking phases of writing this chapter.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Second question about New Athena font

Thank you for sending me a copy of the font to download.  I have done so.  But I don't seem to have a corresponding keyboard on this new operating system.  I don't know what I used on the old system that worked.  Any suggestions for a keyboard so I can get this font to work again?

Where did the New Athena Free Download Go?

I need to download the New Athena Unicode font on my new laptop.  But when I try to find it on the internet, I am not successful.  Does anyone know the webpage where the download is stored?

Monday, April 15, 2013

Congratulations to Dr. Daewoong Kim

Today Daewoong Kim successfully defended his PhD thesis on Daniel's use of Genesis and Ezekiel.  Congratulations.

Photo: Left to right: Dr. Matthias Henze (Advisor: Religious Studies), Daewoong Kim, Dr. Scott McGill (Committee: Classics), Dr. April DeConick (Committee: Religious Studies).

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Gospel of Judas dated to 280 CE

The Gospel of Judas is in the news again.  Apparently the ink has been studied in depth and it has been definitively dated to 280 CE.  Now that is early!

See the story HERE.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Smart Art Video on U-Tube: Easter in Memory of Her

Smart Art video in Houston recorded "Easter in Memory of Her" and has uploaded it to U-Tube.  We are very grateful to Art Smart for doing this for us.  So here it is if you missed the performance on Saturday. Art Smart does all kinds of personal productions, including weddings.



Monday, April 1, 2013

Lecture by Larry Hurtado at Rice University

We at the Religious Studies Department at Rice University are very pleased to announce that Professor Larry Hurtado will deliver the Burkitt Lecture at Rice University on Wednesday, April 10th, 7-8 p.m. in the Kyle Morrow Room of Fondren Library on the Rice campus. The public is invited to attend.

The title of his exciting talk is "Revelatory Experience and Religious Innovation in Earliest Christianity".  He will talk about how powerful religious experiences came to be a major factor in producing significant religious innovations in earliest Christian circles, with special reference to the rapid emergence of the “dyadic” devotional pattern in which Jesus was reverenced along with God.

The Burkitt Foundation Lectures have been devoted to exploring issues in Catholic thought that are of interest to the university as well as to the Houston community. Founded in 1996, they have featured such distinguished speakers as Mary Carruthers, Jean-Luc Marion, Mark Jordan, David Tracy, and Kocku von Stuckrad.

Professor Hurtado is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and he now writes a blog on early Christianity called Larry Hurtado's Blog.  He has written a number of outstanding books on the devotional practices of the early Christians and their understandings of Jesus as God, all of which can be found on Amazon for reasonable prices.

Larry W. Hurtado, God in New Testament Theology. Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2010.  ISBN 978-0-687-46545-3.

Larry W. Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2005.  xii + 234 pp.  ISBN 0-8028-2861-2.  

Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ:  Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity.  Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. (xxii+746 pp.). ISBN 0-8028-6070-2. 

Larry W. Hurtado, At the Origins of Christian Worship:  The Context and Character of Earliest Christian Devotion.  The 1999 Didsbury Lectures.  Carlisle:  Paternoster Press, 1999, ISBN 0-85364-992-8.  US edition, Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2000, ISBN 0-8028-4749-8.  (xiii + 138 pp.).

Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord:  Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism.  Philadelphia:  Fortress Press, 1988. (xiv + 178 pp.).  ISBN 0-8006-2076-3.  British edition by SCM Press.  Second edition, Edinburgh:  T. & T. Clark, 1998 (xxx + 178 pp.), reprint edition, London:  T&T Clark (Continuum), 2003.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Permanent Archive for Front Row Preview

The permanent link to the Front Row Preview has been set up.  If you care to listen to a bit of the performance preview of "Easter in Memory of Her", just click HERE.  You are invited to the actual premier which will take place Saturday, March 30, 4-5 pm at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Front Row Preview

Today on "Front Row" produced by KUHA/KUFH Houston Public Radio, a preview of "Easter in Memory of Her" will air.  There will be interviews with me, Betty Adam, and Sonja Bruzauskas about our production and two soloists present portions of their parts.  It will air twice.  Once at noon on KUHA Classical and then again at 10 pm on KUFH News.  The link to Front Row's website is HERE.  It will be archived on their website tomorrow.  Hope you will listen to this historic production.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Let's Remember the Biblical Women at Easter: Huffington Post

As you know, this Easter I have worked with Reverend Betty Adam of Christ Church Cathedral here in Houston to create an Easter event for Holy Saturday that would remember the biblical women.  My idea for the production was to focus on the faithfulness and feelings of the women who followed Jesus to Jerusalem and remained with him as he died. 

As I wrote the script with Betty, I "stayed" with each woman in her story as it is recorded in the bible, and as I did so I imagined what it would be like to be that woman.  What was her relationship with Jesus?  Why was she with him at his crucifixion?  What was going through her mind and what was she feeling in her heart? 

As I wrote, I realized how different each woman's relationship with Jesus was, and how their reactions to him were very personal, just as our own are.  I realized how much of their spirituality we have lost because we have forgotten to include them in our Easter services.

So I wrote a piece called "Remember the Biblical Women At Easter" and it has just been published by Huffington Post HERE

I hope that if you can't attend our special service on Holy Saturday, that you will join us in spirit during the hour 4-5 p.m. by rereading the women's stories in the bible and remembering their faithfulness and steadfastness, and their prominence in Jesus' life and death.  How do their stories touch you?

Monday, March 25, 2013

Jung Center Lecture on The Ancient New Age

So much is going on this week.  If you are interested, I am going to be presenting some of the work I have been busy with this year as I have been writing my book The Ancient New Age.  The venue will be Thursday night (yes, Maudy Thursday) at the Jung Center, Houston, Texas.  Here is a LINK to more information including time and registration.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

You are invited to "Easter in Memory of Her"

I am excited to invite you to a special service that will be performed at Christ Church Cathedral (Houston, Texas) on Holy Saturday (March 30th) this year.

It is a service remembering the biblical women in the life of Jesus who followed him to the cross and remained steadfast by his side as he died.  The idea for this service came when Reverend Betty Adam approached me and asked me to help create a service that would feature the women followers of Jesus.  I was so honored and excited to get involved in this project and within a couple of weeks Betty and I had written a script and asked local musicians to get involved in creating an original score for voice and harp.

The musical performance and meditation features five women in the life of Jesus who remember Jesus as they stand near the cross and look on.  We hope that this remembrance of the women can become part of the traditional cycle of Easter services performed in Christian churches across the world.  We choose Holy Saturday because it is a silent time, a time vacated and empty when churches strip their altars and when clergy only perform last rites services.  We thought that this time, from 4-5 p.m., would be an appropriate time to remember the women who have been forgotten, whose voices we seldom hear, but who remained steadfast and faithful to Jesus, even to his death.


Thursday, February 14, 2013

Anthony LeDonne and a Jesus course online

Professor LeDonne is trying out something new.  He is offering an online course he calls Portraits of Jesus.  To find out more information, click on this link HERE

This is the course description: In this course we will examine some of the different "Jesuses" who have emerged through the ages, including several interpretations of Jesus in historical studies, and several interpretations of Jesus from art and literature. This course will weave together three primary threads: 1) the Jesus of history; 2) ancient representations of Jesus; and 3) the various modern Jesuses who embody various symbols, ideologies, collective memories, and cultural identities. Through lecture and discussion, we will examine diverse portraits of Jesus in history, literature, art, song, and film throughout history.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Upcoming Lecture on The Ancient New Age

I am pleased to announce that I have been invited to give the 24th Annual Loy Witherspoon Lecture at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte on March 11th, 2013.  I will be speaking about my newest book that I am writing, The Ancient New Age: How Gnostic Spirituality Revolutionized Religion.  For more information, refer to this link HERE.