Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Updating my c-v

Very few people need or care to update a curriculum vitae but in the course of recommending a colleague for promotion to full professor, mine was requested to support the recommendation. Although we actually have an annual review with the academic Dean each Spring (which includes a few pages summarizing our recent professional activities), my c-v seems not to have been updated in a while. What have I published recently?

Looking back over annual reviews and trails of emails, I recalled that I had been invited to submit an article on "Elaine Pagels" for a multi-volume encyclopedia: Women in Today's World (published by MacMillan) and that in 2010 I had received an email from the publishers saying that a draft of my article had been accepted and would be published. And then I heard no more. This kind of reference work is likely only to be bought by libraries. So I went online and found that indeed the work had been published in 2011 with 2016 pages. How on earth would I find the page numbers to reference my tiny article?

Well, some of the material seems to be online because a search for the encyclopedia together with the article on "Elaine Pagels" brought the happy news that the article is on pp.1062-1063. So that's one article correctly referenced!


I've also updated an article I wrote on women in noncanonical texts for the 20th Anniversary edition of A Women's Bible Commentary (Westminster John Knox) eds Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe. The book will be republished in 2012. This was far harder than the original as so much more material on women in noncanonical NT texts has been published in the last 20 years in addition to explosions of material on gender imagery and issues. Strictly speaking, there isn't even a limitation of dates on noncanonical texts. See the problem?

In my updated c-v I also include blog posts I write for Episcopal Cafe. These posts represent a different kind of writing that isn't strictly academic but it reaches a far wider audience than anything academic I ever write. 



"Stuff Happens" (May 2007)

"Missing Saints and Psalms" (July 2007)

"Is It Morally Justifiable to Publish Mother Teresa's Private Letters?" (August 2007) 

"Why Do We Need To Discuss Hospitality?" (September 2007)

"Who's On Trial? The Gospel and the Archbishop"  (November 2007)

"Blood Isn't thicker than Water" (October 2007)
"What Has the Bible to Do With Sexuality?" (December 2007)
"Diversity of Pauline Traditions" (January 2008)
"Secret Mark" (February 2008)
"The Gospel of Truth" (March 2008)
"Female Prophets: A Lost Legacy?" (April 2008)
"Krister Stendahl" with Jane Redmont (May 2008)
"Mourning Diamond" (June 2008)
"Did Jesus Speak Greek?" (September 2008)
"Bill Maher's Religulous: An Exercise in Caricature" (October 2008)
"Our (Same-Sex) Marriage" (December 2008)
"Narnia: Christian Triumphalism or Imaginative Pluralism?" (January 2009)
"Racism, Injustice and Reparations" (February 2009) reposted in Ekklesia:
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/8956
"Singing Judith's Song" (March 2009)
"Why Do You Seek the Living Among the Dead?" (April 2009)
"On Being Excluded" (May 2009)
"Fathers and Daughters" (August 2009)
"The Contribution of the Lone Translator" (October 2009)
"Go Forth From this World" (January 2010)
“To see and respect” (March 2010)
“A Trip that Changed my Life” (May 2010)
“White Light Festival” (December 2010) reposted in Religion at the Margins:
http://religionatthemargins.com/2010/12/the-white-light-festival/
“Buildings and Meanings” (February 2011)
“Elizabeth Johnson: Reliable Guide” (April 2011)
“Created in God’s Image” (July 2011)
“The art of waiting” (August 2011)
“Jesus & Abba” (October 2011)
“Is the Kingdom of Heaven a Ponzi Scheme?” (November 2011)

Long story short: the c-v is taking longer to update than I anticipated...


Saturday, January 21, 2012

Meditations on Matthew 19

Meditations on Matthew 19-21 coming up on a website for the Center for Biblical Studies of St Thomas' Church, Whitemarsh in Philadelphia. Here's the first on Matthew 19. The Daily Mediations are part of an ambitious plan of the rector and the parish via. the resources for the Center to encourage people to read the whole Bible in small bits. Kudos to St Thomas' Church Whitemarsh! Different people are writing meditations for each day over the course of the next few months.

So do you have Bibles in the pews of your parish? What about discussions of the passages of scripture in the lectionary each week? What about discussions of the context of each of these passages so that we don't loose site of the wood for the trees?

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Speaking Events Spring 2012

Starting this Sunday for 2 weeks I am at St James the Less Scarsdale speaking on Jesus the Meek King. January 22, Feb 2, 9, 16 I'll be giving one of four courses at the Cathedral of St John the Divine (see details below). Then I go to the Episcopal Diocese of Central PA Clergy Conference in February 2012 where I am one of two speakers. I'll be speaking on households in the New Testament. On Feb 12th I am at Brick Presbyterian Church in NYC speaking on humanity made in God's image. And on March 4th I am at St Luke's Darien CT speaking on the many faces of Jesus in a Lenten series.

More details about Lenten speaking events soon...


Exploring Genesis
Rabbi Leonard A. Schoolman
Four Tuesdays: January 24, 31, February 7, 14 7:00-8:30 p.m.
The biblical Book of Genesis has become the battleground for conservative and liberal thinkers. Its verses are widely used as proof texts for many arguments. Rabbi Schoolman will guide us in a consideration of the origins of the Book, and will help us to discern the original meanings and the various interpretations of the text itself. Among the topics will be Creation, Adam and Eve, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Binding of Isaac, and the Joseph cycle. Please bring a copy of the Bible.


Biblical Women of Worth
Dr. Phyllis Trible
Four Tuesdays: January 24, 31, February 7, 14 7:00- 8:30 p.m.
Unlike the book of Proverbs 31:10, this course offers different answers to the question, "A woman of worth, who can find?" Professor Trible will explore the phrase "woman of worth" through characters ranging from Eve and Miriam through Jezebel and Huldah to the Syro-Phoenician woman.


Introduction to the Gospels
Professor Deirdre Good
Four Thursdays: January 26, February 2, 9, 16 7:00-8:30 p.m.
The “good news” of the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is the telling of the life of Jesus. Dr. Good will help us to understand the origins of the Gospels, which came first and why, as well as the audiences for which the Gospels were written. These basic documents of Christianity form the basis for an understanding of the art and music of western civilization. Their message is crucial for the education of a well-rounded individual. Please bring a copy of the New Testament.


Introduction to Islam
Dr. Hussein Rashid
Three Thursdays: January 26, February 9, 16 7:00-9:00 p.m.
More than one million Muslims live in the greater New York area. How much do we know of their beliefs and practices? Dr. Rashid will guide us through a basic understanding of Islam as it is practiced in America and abroad. We will look at the Qur’an, Islam’s holy scriptures, and explore its relationship to the Bible of Jews and Christians. He will also help us to understand the many varieties of Islam, including Sunni, Shi’ia and Sufism. There will be ample opportunity for questions and answers, and for discussion.


Friday, January 13, 2012

Professor Larry Schiffman on the DSS at Times Square

Onassis Foundation Exhibition: Transition to Christianity

Currently the Onassis Foundation here in NYC is showing an exhibit Transition to Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity--3rd to 7th Century CE through May 14th, 2012 including items never seen outside Greece. Peter Brown says:


“This exhibition is devoted, in large part, to showing the strange and colorful life of an age which had once been consigned to the shadows, as an age of death and gloom…. Here was an other story, told under an other, more peaceful, eastern sky: the preparation, throughout the territories still ruled from Constantinople by Roman emperors, of a Byzantine civilization that would last for a further millennium.” 

“It was the last and the most open of the great ages of antiquity,” Peter Brown continues. “Of this great story, an exhibition can show only fragments…. These poignant fragments of a long-lost age speak to us directly of what it was like, on the ground, to live through an era of mighty transition.” 


There is an online course at the website giving you a flavor of the exhibit. And the Wall Street Journal published this review on January 4th. 

Podcast Conversations with contributors to Borderlands of Theological Education

 Just thrilled that our podcast conversations with contributors to Borderlands of Theological Education are available here: https://podcast...