In past posts, we have examined women in the first couple of centuries of the Common Era (CE) who may well have been real: Evodia and Syntyche mentioned by Paul in his letter to the Philippians; Apphia, mentioned in Paul’s letter to Philemon; and women mentioned in Chapter 16 of Paul’s letter to the Romans: […]
Mary
Index to the Eighth Year
Thank you for your interest in these blog posts! Here is a listing by topic for posts since October 2022. (Some posts appear in more than one category.) Social and Racial Justice, Diversity Resources and Some Good News For Black History Month 2023, 2/10/23 Celebrating Women’s History Month: A Reading List, 3/24/23 Science Meets Religion: […]
Biblical Scholarship: A Report on the First Global Virtual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature
The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) tried something new in March 2023: holding a virtual global meeting. SBL was founded in 1880 and is “the oldest and largest learned society devoted to the critical investigation of the Bible from a variety of academic disciplines.” SBL holds an Annual Meeting in North America (which now draws […]
Mary, Isis, and the Goddesses of the Via Egnatia
The Via Egnatia, which ran from Constantinople in the east to Dyrrachium, Albania, in the west, was one portion of the more than 50,000 miles of well-built roads of the Roman Empire. It was along the Via Egnatia, in part, that St. Paul and his companions spread the Christian message, visiting friends and family, preaching […]
The Apocryphal Origins of the Cherry Tree Carol
Tis the season when many of us are singing – and/or listening to – Christmas carols. These carols often reflect the stories of Jesus’ birth as recounted in the New (Christian) Testament Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but many others originate considerably later in the Christian tradition. One of these later tales is the Cherry […]
Solidarity with Jews in Light of Heightened Antisemitism
Last year brought yet another extremely disturbing statistic: 2017 marked the highest increase in antisemitic incidents in the US since the first Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents was taken in 1979. In a statement, Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, stated, “A confluence of events in 2017 led to a surge […]
Random Christmas Thoughts
Three days before Christmas: a good time to share some random thoughts on the reason for the holiday – the man Jesus with the title “Christ.” Jesus the man lived nearly 2,000 years ago as a Jewish subject in the Roman Empire. After he died, his followers kept his memory alive in a myriad of […]
Medjugorje: Exploring the Science of the Afterlife
Many modern Westerners tend to be leery of the possibility of an afterlife, even of the existence of a soul. In a Post-Enlightenment age, we are surrounded by science, technology, evidence and proofs. Climate change denial notwithstanding, we tend to believe only what we can observe with our five senses. The physical is real; the […]
Exploring the Influence of Salome in Early Christianity
Once in awhile, it’s an interesting exercise to explore the more obscure characters in early Christian literature. For moderns, an obscure character in an ancient religious document might seem far from important; she or he might well be the figment of someone’s imagination and the surrounding story a complete work of meaningless fiction. Here I […]
Images of Mary in Christian Apocryphal Art
In previous posts (Trinities; When Early Christians Revered a Female Deity; Trials and Tribulations of Translating Scripture 2; and The Feminine/Androgynous Jesus), we have dealt to some extent with Mary, the mother of Jesus (also known in Christian tradition as the Virgin Mary or the Mother of God). We have seen that, although there is […]