Documenting research dead-ends

One of the frustrating parts of research, at least in my field, is the fact that you can spend large amounts of time doing research that only shows that something or other is almost certainly not the answer to your question. You can never show beyond all doubt that it isn’t because you can never [...]

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Totally off topic – what kind of hermeneutic?

On Friday, a very miserable young man found his way to my office, referred by one of the counsellors. Can somebody please tell me how supposedly good Christian parents can disown and cut off all contact with their kind, caring, socially concerned, articulate, intelligent and generally pleasant son just because he happens to be gay? [...]

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April DeConick on Gospel of Judas

April DeConick’s new book The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas really says is now available for pre-order on Amazon in the UK, Canada and the US and she has posted a synopsis of the chapters on her blog. While I was at Rice earlier this year, I was able to read a very [...]

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Which Ancient Language are You?

One thing I find difficult to resist is quizzes, so I just had to try The Which Ancient Language Are You Test, thanks to Angela Roskop Erisman on Imaginary Grace . My results was: You are Akkadian, a blend of the incomprehensible symbols of the Sumerians with the unwritable sounds of the early Semitic peoples. [...]

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Farewell Letty Russell

The following obituary for Letty Russell was written by her partner, Shannon Clarkson, and posted on the WATER email list. As a woman ordained in the 1980s I am very conscious of just how much easier people like Letty made being a woman minister for people like me. We didn’t have to be “the first” [...]

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Why do non-canonical texts make us uneasy?

April DeConick poses this question on her blog and I thought, as someone who is studying a non-canonical text, I might have a go at answering it. Several people have suggested that one of the reasons that the non-canonical texts make us uneasy is because there isn’t a centuries-long history of interpretation for us to [...]

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