Thinking more about Traditions and traditions

When I think about my scholarship and my teaching, I am realizing that I am a tradition-critic in every sense of the word. Yes I am fascinated at tracking and explaining the emergence and transmission of traditions, but I am also involved in understanding the development of The Christian Tradition, as it is reflected and safeguarded by the normative churches. So I am involved in both aspects of the study of (T)(t)radition.

This has led me to reflect upon another aspect of what my scholarship is about. Being in two religious studies departments over the last fifteen years, rather than theology or biblical departments, has made a difference for me. It has allowed me to grow in my critical examination and evaluation of The Tradition, rather than become immersed in a type of scholarship whose purpose (whether intentional or not) is to shore up and support The Tradition, to use biblical approaches to legitimate again the old normative story.

The more I reflect upon this, the more I realize that this is at the heart of the problem I see in biblical scholarship - whether or not we are willing to question The Tradition and its power of normation, whether we are willing or not to work the materials from the 'other' side, to see what is there and how what is there bears on the normative narrative and exegetical tradition that is centuries old.

My work is more than the retrieval of the 'other' side. It is an attempt to integrate the 'other' side into the story before and as the process of normation was underway. To do so means to cut into the story that The Tradition created, to see how it was put together in the fashion it was, and why. It has never been my experience that The Tradition is left intact. Yet, I have never felt that we are left with nothing. There is a new wholeness that emerges, although one that The Tradition may not (want) to recognize.

John Kutsko is appointed the Executive Director of SBL

This just came through to me via SBL, and I have to say that I am thrilled! John Kutsko and I trained at the University of Michigan together in the 1980s, before Peter Machinist took a position at Harvard. He is a person of scholarly integrity and collegiality, and I look forward to his leadership in our society. Congratulations John!

Kutsko to Become SBL Executive Director on 1 July 2010

Bruce Birch, chair of the SBL Council, has announced that John F. Kutsko has been named the new Executive Director of the Society of Biblical Literature, effective 1 July 2010. After an extensive international search chaired by Fernando Segovia, Birch reported that the search committee’s unanimous and enthusiastic support of Kutsko was affirmed by Council at its April meeting. Birch said, “Strong and insightful leadership has always been a quality valued by SBL whether in our publications, congresses, or programs for professional development. We are looking forward to Kutsko’s leadership of an organization committed to core values of ‘responsiveness to change, scholarly integrity, inclusiveness, collegiality, collaboration, and accountability.’”

Kutsko began his graduate work in Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East at the University of Michigan and completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1997 under the mentorship of Peter Machinist. His revised dissertation was published as Between Heaven and Earth: Divine Presence and Absence in the Book of Ezekiel. He has been active in the SBL publishing program (contributing editor of The SBL Handbook of Style) and the Symposium series, as well as the Career Center Advisory Group, the SBL Forum, and the Ezekiel Seminar. And he has been a faculty mentor for fellows at The Fund for Theological Education, where he has taught a dissertation-writing and publishing workshop for over a decade.

In addition to his academic contributions, John has over twenty years of publishing, leadership, and executive experience. He has worked on projects such as the The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Doubleday) and Civilizations of the Ancient Near East (Scribner’s Sons), and he was Associate Editorial Director at Hendrickson Publishers until 2003.

“I am thrilled to serve the members and mission of SBL. I join a gifted and dedicated staff. I look forward to collaborating with and giving leadership to a scholarly community in ways that enhance and further its teaching and research. I am grateful to follow the remarkable accomplishments of Kent Richards, who is very much the founder of the modern SBL. Kent has digitized, internationalized, and broadened SBL. I’ll bring all my energy to expanding these accomplishments and fostering the future of biblical scholarship.”

He joins SBL from Abingdon Press, the main imprint of The United Methodist Publishing House, where he served as Associate Publisher and began as Director of Academic and Professional Resources in 2003. At Abingdon he directed such projects as The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible and The Wesley Study Bible, and led a digital publishing initiative.

“I believe that the skills and experience I have from my rather non-traditional academic c.v. will help guide SBL’s members through the challenges and opportunities the discipline faces in the scholarly academy and higher education today. I am grateful to SBL for allowing the second half of my career to integrate this level of professional experience.”

Androcentrism

Today is the last day of classes at Rice. Will be ending my Introduction to New Testament Studies talking about androcentricism. Consider for a moment how male-centrism may have affected the memory of the early Christian traditions and their transmission. Leave me one idea in the comments (please limit to serious comments on the stated subject). Let's collect as many consequences as we can muster.

I'll start: women and their participation are marginalized and forgotten, like the woman in Mark who anointed Jesus' head...whose name the traditions no longer remembers.

Thinking about Tradition v. tradition

Professor Kocku von Stuckrad from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands has been stranded in Houston due to the eruption of the volcano and the cancellation of his flight home after the Hidden God conference. So today he joined my seminar and discussed the methodology which he has been developing to analyze the history of Western Esotericism and published a few weeks ago in his new book Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.

It was a pleasure to hear him discuss how he approaches the problem of pluralism in the ancient world and his constructive views. What struck me about our conversation was the difference in our usage of words. I don't know if this is because he was trained in Europe and I in the States, but it has caused me to pause again and consider again that even though we may be using the same words in our analyses, we do not necessarily mean the same thing.

Part of our discussion centered on the word 'tradition' which von Stuckrad has set aside in favor of another concept, 'discursive field'. He does so because 'tradition' means for him 'the' centrist religions and is not able to handle the material 'outside' 'the' tradition except on 'the' tradition's own terms. Discursive field, however, allows him to talk about any field of knowledge (like 'journeys to heaven') without being bound to 'the' tradition's perspective of it.

I identify as a tradition-critic. But my understanding and use of the word 'tradition' is not the same as von Stuckrad's. I don't use it to mean 'the' tradition or the Tradition, as a referent to the centrist religion and its normation. I use it in the sense of 'tradition' with a little 't': as those ideological holdings and practices belonging to a group and transmitted by them over time. I think that I am using the term 'tradition' in the same way that von Stuckrad is using 'discursive field'.

So this afternoon was enlightening for me, reminding me how careful I need to be to define the terms I am using in my academic writing, and never to assume that my colleagues, especially across the Atlantic, are using them in the same manner.

What a successful conference!

What an awesome conference!

I want to thank all who participated or attended for making it a truly successful event. I learned an enormous amount from my colleagues and from the students who all gave papers.

Here is our company in front of the reflecting pool at the Rothko Chapel.

From left to right: back row: Enoch Olujide Gbadegesin; Kocku von Stuckrad; Andrei Orlov; Jeff Kripal; John Turner; Claire Fanger; Grant Adamson; Bill Parsons; Justin. Front row: Stephen Finley; April DeConick; Marcia Brennan; Bernard McGinn; Chad Pevateaux; Shira Lander. Not present for photo: Ata Anzali; Dustin Atlas; Benjamin Brochstein; Kelley Coblentz Bautch; David Cook; Jonathan Garb; Margarita Simon Guillory; Greg Kaplan; Anne Carolyn Klein; David Porreca; John Stroup; Franklin Trammell; Claire Villarreal; Betul Yavuz.

Edited volume: Histories of the Hidden God...to come.

Hidden God, Hidden Histories Schedule

Today is the day! This afternoon at 3:15 the Hidden God, Hidden Histories Rockwell Symposium convenes.

HERE is a link to the poster and the detailed schedule. Scroll down the page and the first hyperlink will bring up our beautiful poster. The second hyperlink will bring up the detailed schedule.

There is no registration fee. The conference is open to the public. Please join us for any or all of the sessions if you are in the area and looking for something to do.

Praying in Her Own Voice

Two showings of the documentary film by Yael Katzir in Houston! This is not one to miss.

Praying in Her Own Voice
The Struggle of Women of the Wall for Freedom of Worship in Israel

VIEW TRAILER

ADDITIONAL INFO ABOUT FILM


Monday, April 12th, 7:30 pm, Rice University Cinema, 6100 Main Street, Houston FREE
Thursday, April 18th, 7 pm, Temple Sinai, 13875 Brimhurst Drive, Houston

Producer Ravit Markus will attend both screenings and be available for Q&A after the screening.

Apocryphote of the Day: Meditation on Easter

"He dwells either in this world or in the resurrection or in the middle place. God forbid that I be found there! In this world there is good and evil. Its good things are not good, and its evil things not evil. But there is evil after this world which is truly evil, what is called 'the middle'. It is death. While we are in this world it is fitting for us to acquire the resurrection, so that when we strip off the flesh we may be found in rest and not walk in the middle. For many go astray on the way. For it is good to come forth from the world before one has sinned."

Gos. Phil. 66.8-24 (sec. century Valentinian text)

Eyewitness Testimony

Judy Redman has a dynamite article in the newest edition of Journal of Biblical Literature 129 (2010) 177-197. "How Accurate are Eyewitnesses? Bauckham and the Eyewitnesses in the Light of Psychological Research." I am thrilled to see it finally in print!

Passover among Christians

I read with interest a newspaper article this morning which described a growing practice among liberal Christian churches in Houston, of celebrating the Passover as well as Easter. It is celebrated with a Christian interpretation of the lamb, with Jesus' passion at its heart. Some of the local Jewish communities are concerned that their festival is being usurped by the Christians, stating that the Christians are taking their holiday and symbols and investing them with meanings foreign to them. They are not happy with this new Christian tradition. One rabbi said that he doesn't mind having other groups celebrate Passover as long as it is celebrated as Jews would do.

Being a historian of early Christian, my first reaction to this is well, what is new? This is the exact conversation (with the same complaints) that the early Christians and the early Jews were having in the first and second centuries. Most Christians in this period celebrated Passover as a Christian holiday altering all the symbols so that they pointed to Christ. Our earliest homily is by Melito and it is the homily he preached at Passover. It has this classic reinterpretation, which also ends up being very anti-semitic in its orientation as you might well imagine. Easter isn't mentioned in any documents as far as I know until the fourth century (Nicaea, 325). When it is mentioned by Socrates Scholasticus (380), it is recognized as a local custom that was not biblical (that is Jesus and his apostles didn't command it) but had developed in the catholic churches as a way to celebrate the resurrection.

UPDATE: Link to Melito's sermon

Poster Art

Here is the poster artwork for the approaching conference, Hidden God, Hidden Histories. I think it is stunning and look forward to the conference. It is open to the public, so if you are in the area, stop by for a session or two. I'll post a final schedule soon.

About Patterson's review

I have been asked by some of my blog readers to respond to Stephen Patterson's recent RBL review of my book, The Original Gospel of Thomas In Translation. It is a review, and normally authors don't respond to them. It represents one scholar's opinion of another's work. There is not much more to say than that. Some scholars have highly praised my works. Others do not. Patterson is among the latter.

Why the difference in scholarly assessment? When reading reviews of books, I always try to keep in mind that every scholar comes from a particular position, and that position likely has impacted how he or she reviews a book. In the case of Professor Patterson, he is a strong supporter and member of the Jesus Seminar and its new project on Christian Origins. Central to that project is the position that the earliest Christians were non-eschatological wisdom folk, as was Jesus. They use their earliest literary stratification of Quelle, and the Gospel of Thomas to demonstrate this thesis.

Where do I differ from Patterson? I argue that the Gospel of Thomas does not all come from the same period. And if we make a full literary-critical analysis of the gospel that we will see that the oldest materials in the Gospel of Thomas are eschatological, and these have been softened over time to focus on more mystical traditions as the gospel grows and develops within a church setting.

Patterson wrongly calls my method "form-critical". It is not. A form-critical approach, as we all know, is an approach whereby variant readings of a saying are compared and through this comparison a primary oral originating version is projected. I never do such a thing in my book. I am not comparing versions of sayings to come up with an oral originating version of the sayings or of the Gospel of Thomas. In fact, I think that the form critical project is defunct. I have included an entire three chapters on my method in Recovering, which I call a new tradition-historical method, and include within it a strong critique of form criticism in light of studies in orality and rhetoric.

What do I do? I begin with an observation that the form critics make and with which I do agree. The form critics have successfully demonstrated that the sayings tradition has been reworked with communal interests in mind. In other words, it has been secondarily developed. One of the places where we can see this development most prominently is in the passages where sayings have been worked into dialogues between Jesus and the disciples, especially when those dialogues are about issues that were concerns for the church, but likely not concerns for Jesus' followers during his lifetime. This is my starting point to identify material in the Gospel of Thomas that has been secondarily developed by the church.

There are a number of such dialogues we can identify in the Gospel of Thomas. And the issues raised in them are post-resurrection concerns. The disciples are asking Jesus when they are going to see him again, when the new world is going to come, what diet they should follow, whether or not they should be circumcised, and so forth. All of these issues are easily traced to issues that were facing the church in its formative years.

My method proceeds by analyzing these dialogues, their themes and their vocabulary. From there I continue a structured literary analysis of the rest of the sayings, identifying those which contain similar themes and vocabulary.

After making this analysis, I examine what sayings are left, and what I discovered is that the sayings left have an imminent eschatological outlook and a christological outlook that is remarkably similar to the first Christianity that was associated with Jerusalem and the tradition of James. I also noticed that the sayings I could identify as secondary were of another variety altogether, focused on encratic and mystical traditions that were readjusting, tempering, taming, whatever you want to call it, the earlier eschatological perspective.

The long and short of it is that Professor Patterson and I are never going to see eye to eye on the Gospel of Thomas. So Patterson's review should come as no surprise to any of my readers. It certainly does not come as a surprise to me. My thesis does not fit the Jesus Seminar model, and in fact, if taken seriously by the Jesus Seminar, would uproot it. I am never going to support the program of the Jesus Seminar which has a particular version of Jesus and the early church which it wishes to promote even when the evidence points in another direction as is the case with the Gospel of Thomas, and also in my opinion Q.

The questions that one should ask of Patterson is why a literary-critical analysis (and even form-critical if one wanted to) is possible and successful for the synoptics and Quelle, but not for Thomas? Why is it possible to make a full literary-critical analysis of a text we don't even possess, and yet not so with the Gospel of Thomas? Thomas is exactly the kind of text that Bultmann would have loved. It is as close to an "oral" text as we are going to get. We have the brains and the tools to do this as I have demonstrated in my book, and yet it is resisted. Why? Is it because we will see that the early tradition was eschatological? That Bultmann was right after all?!

I continue to object to being read as someone who wants to "stratify" the Gospel of Thomas. This is Patterson's model and language not mine. I am not identifying layers, something I repeatedly state in my work. I see the text as a rolling text, as shifting in its contents gradually as it was performed and copied. I hope if I repeat myself enough perhaps I will soon be quoted properly on this subject and that the secondary literature that will be written in the future will speak about my position accurately.

I also want my readers to know that my two volume work was originally a single volume and the publisher broke them up because of the length. So they really are companion volumes written together. This means that the second volume, the commentary, was written as an appendix to support my arguments in the first volume. It is like an extensive footnote system for my own analysis of the Gospel of Thomas (see p. xi Recovering; p. ix Original). The commentary was never intended to be a full commentary representing all material that was ever written on each and every saying. I write in the introduction that I am not including in my commentary references to the Gnostic hermeneutic but instead have focused on an alternative hermeneutic which sees the Gospel as an example of Syrian religiosity, which is the argument I am making in Recovering.

Women Yesterday and Today 1: The Wage Gap

March is Women's History month. So I am going to be devoting a good portion of my blogging this month to a series I'm calling: Women Yesterday and Today. To start off the series, I thought I would highlight a few statistics that are very troubling.

Women are now 50% of the workforce. On average women earn 77 cents to every dollar earned by men. Just one year (!) out of college, women already earn less than their male colleagues earn, even when they work in the same field with the same degree. At ages 66 and older women are twice (!) as likely as men to be poor. It has taken 40 years (!) to begin to close the wage gap by a meager 12 cents.

What is really alarming is just how much the wage gap widens the older women get. One year after graduation, women average 80% of the salary their male counterparts are earning. Ten years later they are earning 69% of the salary of their male counterparts. Even when researchers control for all the known factors that can affect earnings (hours, occupation, parenthood, etc.) their research shows that one-quarter of the pay gap remains unexplained. Over time, this unexplained portion of the pay gap grows larger and larger.

The AAUW has an interactive map HERE where you can hover over any state and find out the wage gap stats closer to home. It is sad to view these stats. Among college grads, women in Texas are earning 70% of what their male counterparts are earning. In my home state Michigan, it is even worse: 68%.

Last year, President Obama began to work on this problem by signing into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The second part of this legislation has been stalled in the Senate, but it will finally receive its hearing. On March 11, the Senate will hold a hearing on the Paycheck Fairness Act, which is an update of the 46-year old Equal Pay Act. If you want to read more about this legislation or if you want to send your senators a letter to support this legislation, go HERE (AAUW website page). They have set up the website so that it is very easy to create and send your message, either via email or on letterhead. It took me two minutes.

I will come back to this topic again since April 20th is Equal Pay Day. And HERE are some pay equity ideas for action for that day if you want to make the problem more visible around your local area.

All stats are taken from AAUW.

The name of my John talk

The name of my talk on the Gospel of John for the Hidden God, Hidden Histories conference is: "What is hiding in the Gospel of John? Reconceptualizing Johannine Origins and the Roots of Gnosticism".

My "paper" has become so full and so detailed that it looks like it is going to become the basis of another book. I already have the title for it:

John Interrupted: What can the Gospel of John tell us about the origins of Christianity and Gnosticism?

The work I'm doing is from the ground up, straight back to the ancient sources. And all because one day, while preparing to deliver an undergraduate lecture on the Gospel of John, I stumbled upon a passage in Greek that is not translated accurately in any modern translation I have been able to find.

Self-perservation and the Gospel of John

I haven't been blogging too much lately because I have been up to my neck in research on the Gospel of John as I am preparing for the upcoming Hidden God, Hidden Histories conference. This research has been both enlightening and depressing, a sort of high and low of my academic journey.

I have known for a long time that traditions are conservative and self-interested, but what is coming home for me in a very real way is just how much the traditions are safe-guarded by the dominant group - be it the mainstream churches or the academy - and how far the dominant group will go to protect them. The interests and preservation of those interests often become the end-all, even at the expense of historical truth. The rationalizations, the apologies, the 'buts', the tortured exegesis, the negative labeling, the side-stepping, the illogical claims accumulate until they create an insurmountable wall that preserves both church and academy, which remain (uncomfortably so for me) symbiotic.

The entrenchment of the academy is particularly worrisome for me. Scholars' works are often spun by other scholars, not to really engage in authentic critical debate or review, but to cast the works in such a way that they can be dismissed (if they don't support the entrenchment) or engaged (if they do). In other words, fair reproduction of the author's position and engagement with it does not seem to me to be the top priority. The quest for historical knowledge does not appear to me to be the major concern. It usually plays back seat to other issues including the self-preservation of the ideas and traditions of the dominant parties - those who control the churches, and the academy with its long history of alliance with the churches.

I already know that what I have to say about the critical history of the Gospel of John and the origins of Christianity is going to be countered with the full force of the church and academic tradition that has built up around the fourth gospel a secure armor of 'correct' and 'permitted' interpretation, an exegetical tradition as old as the Johannine epistles that has worked to normalize, to deradicalize, to tame the beast. What I have to say is 'not allowed' speech, 'can't be' talk.

Even so I continue to study and write, to speak the unspeakable in my quest to remain fully engaged with the critical investigation of Christian history.

Horner's Coptic New Testament now available through LuLu.com

If you want to have Horner's long out-of-print critical edition of the Coptic New Testament (Sahidic and Boharic), it is now available for sale on LuLu.com. You can select paperback or hardback editions for VERY reasonable prices. Here are the links. I am so excited to finally own a copy!

Sahidic New Testament Paperback:

The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume I
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume II
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume III
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume IV
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume V
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume VI
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume VII

Sahidic New Testament Hardcover:

The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume I
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume II
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume III
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume IV
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume V
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume VI
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, Volume VII

Boharic New Testament Paperback:

The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Northern Dialect, Volume I
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Northern Dialect, Volume II
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Northern Dialect, Volume III
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Northern Dialect, Volume IV

Boharic New Testament Hardcover:

The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Northern Dialect, Volume I
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Northern Dialect, Volume II
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Northern Dialect, Volume III
The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Northern Dialect, Volume IV

Blogger has added static pages!

Thanks to LucValentine who brought my attention to the fact that Blogger has listened to us and added static pages! We can add up to ten static pages to our blogs now. Just go to dashboard and click 'edit pages'.

So I will be working on this blog and getting the static pages put up instead of relocating to another host.

An image to imagine

Image: William Blake, "The Ancient of Days," 1794 (London: BM)

Main Speakers for Hidden God, Hidden Histories Symposium

I have now the list of main speakers for the Rockwell Religious Studies 2010 Symposium: Hidden God, Hidden Histories. There will be graduate student speakers involved in each session as well.

In Western religious traditions, God is conventionally conceived to be humanlike creator, king, or ruler enthroned in heaven. But what about the God of the unconventional Western traditions, the God of the mystics, gnostics, and sages? Like almost everything else in these esoteric traditions, God is hidden, secreted away. Sometimes God shows up in another universe beyond our world. Other times God is cloaked behind veils in celestial palaces or within a body of blinding light. Often God is understood to be utterly transcendent, utterly beyond us, while also immediately immanent, immediately within us. This symposium, the inaugural event of the Department of Religious Studies’ new Program on Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism (or GEM) offers academic reflections on these secreted traditions about God, from the ancient world to the modern period.


ROCKWELL SYMPOSIUM, April 15-18

April 15, 3-5 p.m.

April D. DeConick, Rice University
“The Gospel of John as a Transtheistic Early Christian Gospel: Reconceptualizing Johannine Origins and the Roots of Gnosticism”

John Turner, University of Nebraska
“From Hidden to Revealed in Sethian Revelation, Ritual and Protology”

BURKITT PUBLIC LECTURE, April 15, 7:30-9 p.m.

Kocku van Struckard, University of Groningen
“The Esoteric Quest and Western Culture”

April 16, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.

Kelley Coblentz-Bautch, University of St. Edwards
“The Hidden God in the Pseudo-Clementines”

Andrei Orlov, Marquette University
“Adoil Outside the Cosmos: God Before and After Creation in Enochic Traditions”

Bernard McGinn, University of Chicago
“The Hidden God and the Hidden Self in Christian Mysticism”

Claire Fanger, Rice University
"God's Occulted Body: Divine Involucra in Alan of Lille and Bernard Silvestris"

David Porreca, University of Waterloo
"How Hidden is God? Revelation and Pedagogy in Ancient and Medieval Hermetic Writings"

David Cook, Rice University
“The Vision of God in Muslim Dreams”

Jeff Kripal, Rice University
"On the Mothman, UFOs, and Other Monsters: John A. Keel and the Superspectrum of the Occult"

John Stroup, Rice University
"The Multidimensional Physics of History and the Problem of Transtheistic God-Language as Cultural Critique in the Popular and Learned Works of Joseph P. Farrell"

April 17, 8:30 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

Gregory Kaplan, Rice University
"How (Not) to 'Immanentize the Eschaton' and Other Problems for Hans Jonas and Eric Voegelin"

Steven Finley, Louisiana State University
"Hidden Away: Esotericism and Gnosticism in Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam"

Anne Klein, Rice University
“The Transcendent, the Mysterious, and the Hidden in Tibet: A Buddhist Logos”

Shira Lander, Rice University
“Scholarship on Ancient Palestinian Helios Mosaics: Hiding the Revealed God”

Marcia Brennan, Rice University
“The Modern Museum and Mystical Houston”

April 18, 8:30-11 a.m.

Jonathan Garb, Hebrew University
"Shamanism and Modern Kabbalah"

Bill Parsons, Rice University
“Contours of an Emerging Psychoanalytic Spirituality: Prospects and Problems”

PhD opportunities at University of Groningen

Professor von Stuckrad sent me a link to what looks like wonderful opportunities in Religious Studies at the University of Groningen. There are four openings for competitive PhD positions. The link is HERE.